


Future Tense

by stoprobbers



Series: Future Perfect [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: College, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Idiots in Love, Romance, all the feelings, i changed that tag because it felt disingenous, i won't ever lie to you, there is mike/eleven in here but it's reaaaally background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-02-23 16:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13193781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoprobbers/pseuds/stoprobbers
Summary: The first real fight they have – not a disagreement, not an argument, not a debate, but a for real fight – is when he admits he's not going to NYU.Nancy once told him she didn't want to be like her parents - meet an older man, get married, move to a cul de sac, start a family. But just because she makes a different plan doesn't mean the world will follow it.





	1. 1.go build yourself another dream, this choice isn't mine

**Author's Note:**

> This has been floating around in my head literally since Season 2 aired. No chapter will be posted before the next has been started. Rating is mostly for future chapters, but adulthood is, well, adult as these two are about to find out. 
> 
> Also, pretty sure this is gonna have four chapters, but that number may grow. Still, it's already finite. I know that much.

The first real fight they have – not a disagreement, not an argument, not a debate, but a for real fight – is when he admits he's not going to NYU.

He tells her sitting in her bedroom on a grey and overcast Saturday in March while her parents have gone to Holly's dance recital and Mike is out at Hopper's cabin. He came over and she crawled on top of him immediately, straddling his lap and running her fingers through his hair in that way she knows drives him crazy. It had taken all his willpower, and the knowledge of his likely impending doom, to stop his fingers from moving under her shirt, into the back of her jeans, and to ease her off his lap, onto the comforter next to him. To say the words, "I'm not going."

She had told him between stolen kisses in the dark room the day before that she'd gotten into Columbia, had accepted the admission and was moving to New York with him. He kept it carefully clamped down but his stomach had twisted and churned at her words, his heart dropped to his feet. And so he called her that night and told her he needed to see her, let her believe he just wanted to spend a Saturday with her, that he wasn't going to break her heart.

He knows he is such an asshole.

Nancy is, predictably, furious. The color drains out of her face and he stares at his hand.

"What?" she whispers. "What?!"

She keeps repeating that word as if she's stuck, a record with a scratch that can't stop skipping, but it grows in volume every time until she's screaming at him. 

"I can't," he says, still unable to look her in the eye. "My mom, Will… I can't, Nancy. I can't leave them."

"But you can leave _me_?" There is so much hurt in her voice, so much raw pain, and he forces himself to look at her. Tears are standing in her eyes but her face is flushed with anger.

" _No_ ," he breathes, reaching out to cup her cheek but she pulls out of reach. He draws his hand back as if he's been burned. "I don’t want to leave you. We have the phone, I can come visit, you'll be home for holidays and breaks…"

"And you'll, what? Just be here? Working at the Hawk? Cooking breakfast for your mom and brother?" She spits the words like poison and his stomach burns. "Throwing away your dreams?"

"I'll get a different job. I'll figure something out. But I can't… I _can't_." He presses his lips together into a hard line and forces the next words out. "If something happens… if it comes back again, I have to be here."

Tears are cascading down her face but she doesn't look sad, she looks angrier than he's ever seen, including when she fired shot after shot at a monster with no face, aimed a gun at her then-boyfriend and told him to _get out, leave now_.

"Bullshit," she bites out. "That is _bullshit_. We had a _plan_ , Jonathan. We _made a plan_."

"Nancy—"

"You _lied_ to me! You lied right to my face!"

" _Nancy_ —"

"Get out," she says, low and soft. "Get out, get out, get out!"

She throws the small, soft decorative pillows on her bed at him, pelts him with the few remaining stuffed animals tucked in amongst her books, advancing on him with each throw until he's out in her hallway and almost to the stairs. She slams her bedroom door in his face and he stands there staring at it, waiting for it to open up, waiting for her to come out and say something, do something. But it stays closed and silent and if he listens carefully he can hear her crying.

It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the Wheeler home, like he's drowning and like something big and heavy is sat on his chest at the same time. He reaches out to knock but he can't complete the motion, can't think of what he'd say anyway. He's already declined his acceptance at NYU. Has already sealed his fate. Has already lost his love.

He leaves without saying a word, steps soft and nearly silent on the Wheelers' carpeted stairs, closing the front door with a quiet click. Will's always been good at hiding, but he's the expert on how to disappear.

+++

She stays in bed the whole weekend. Her mom picks her lock when everyone gets back home and she refuses to come own for dinner, finds her under the covers in a fitful sleep after she exhausted herself crying. She sits with her and strokes her hair, and Nancy won't talk, but agrees to eat some soup if she can eat in her room. Mike stands in the doorway and watches, silent and worried, but she can't bring herself to tell him what's going on.

He gets into bed with her Sunday night, just before their mom will yell at him to go to bed so he's not late for school, and cuddles up behind her. He hasn't done this since just after Eleven disappeared and Will came back.

"Did you and Jonathan break up?"

That's the question, isn't it? They didn't, not explicitly at least, but she can't wrap her head around how this is supposed to work when she's halfway across the country and he's here.

"I don't know," she admits in a hoarse whisper. "He's not going to NYU."

"What?!"

It's gratifying that Mike sounds just as shocked as she did.

"He said," she chokes on the words, clears her throat. "He said he's staying here. For his mom, for Will."

Mike is silent and she turns to face him and presses forward.

"I said yes to Columbia."

It hurts to say now. She had been so excited, so overjoyed. A great school, the same city as her boyfriend, as the love of her goddamn life, the world spread out before them. Late nights with Chinese takeout, no parents knocking on bedroom doors or interrupting phone calls, a one-bedroom off-campus apartment with a queen sized bed and everything they could want to do to each other, unsupervised. She'd thought about it all after getting that acceptance letter, imagined walking around in their apartment wearing just his shirt and nothing else, imagined waking up to him at the stove in just his boxers making eggs. And now it's gone, it's all gone. Shattered. Destroyed.

Mike just wraps his arms around her and squeezes tightly and she starts crying again.

"I'm so angry," she admits into her little brother's shoulder. "How could he do this to me? To us?"

She hears her bedroom door open, surely her mother telling Mike to go to bed already, but it just closes again, leaving them in peace.

"I'm sorry, Nancy," Mike is saying. "I'm so sorry."

Monday morning she forces herself out from under the covers, washes her face, styles her hair, puts on her armor of jeans and sweaters, and leaves early to catch the bus. She usually drives in with Jonathan but she's not ready to see him, not yet. She's not even sure if he's going to come by. She's not going to miss first period for a boy again.

Everyone at school seems painfully normal. There's the usual chatter. She sees Mike and Will huddled around his locker, talking with heads close together. They glance up when she walks by and she catches Will's eye for a second. He looks guilty and she feels like a jerk; none of this is _his_ fault.

Jonathan is standing at her locker, waiting. He looks about as shitty as she does; the bags under his eyes are as deep as she's ever seen them, and there's stubble on his jaw. When he sees her, terror flashes across his face, but he doesn't move. _Good_ , she thinks. _He_ should _fear her._

She steels herself, keeps her face stony as she reaches for the lock, starts to move it for her combination.

"Hi," he says softly, his voice hoarse.

"Hi," she echoes, eyes carefully trained on the grey metal in front of her. She feels the air around her move, and his lips brush ever so softly against her cheek. It makes something in her chest come loose and tears spring to her eyes again. She brushes them away angrily.

"Don't make me cry in the hallway," she whispers sharply.

"I didn't mean to make you cry at all," he whispers back. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," she opens the locker door, shoves her chemistry textbook inside, pulls out history. He takes hold of her wrist, freezing her arm in place and forcing her to look at him.

"I love you," he says softly. She bites her lip and her eyes burn.

"How can you say that? After what you told me? What you did?"

"Nancy," he sighs and steps closer. "I love you, and I love my mom and Will, and I… I had to do this. Every time I thought about NYU, about New York, about leaving I… it was horrible. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to hurt you but I can't go. Not now."

She yanks her hand out of his grip to brush away more tears, ones that have spilled over without permission.

"So you'll just throw us away?"

" _No_ ," he says, a little louder this time. People are looking at them now and he frowns, glances around, then closes her locker door and pulls her down the hallway to the dark room. There's no photography class first period and it'll be empty. It makes her stomach knot up, remembering the last time they were in there, how happy she was, how excited. Now it feels like he's leading her to a funeral.

He pulls her inside and locks the door and oh, that hurts too.

"I do not want to break up with you," he says, face close to hers. She closes her eyes; it's too much to look at him. "I know it's going to be hard, and I know you're going to be far away, but dammit, Nancy, I love you. We'll figure it out. If we can figure out how to trap a monster we can figure out how to stay together while you're at college." 

She's not sure why that pulls a laugh from her, but it does. A watery, sad laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. He steps closer, cups her cheek.

"Nance," and it's that little affectionate nickname that breaks that thing in her chest open and the tears start to roll again. " _Please_. Can we try?"

She's still so angry. It's just not that simple.

"Why didn't you say anything?" she whispers. "Why didn't you _talk_ to me? I'd have understood, I'd have gone with it. I love you, you could have _talked_ to me."

"I didn't want to hurt you."

"So you thought keeping it a secret would hurt me _less_? I had other options. I could have gone somewhere closer."

"You wanted to go to Columbia."

"Yeah, because you were going to go to NYU!" She doesn't shake off his hand but the tears have stopped now and her eyes are blazing, boring into his. "There are half a dozen schools I wanted to go to as much as Columbia. I _wanted_ to be close to _you_."

He sighs, closes his eyes, leans his forehead against hers. She's amazed he has the nerve to do that, and is amazed that she doesn't want to push him away. She's furious and she's hurt and she wants to slap him and she wants him to hold her close and promise he's never going to let her go.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I fucked up."

"Yeah, you did," she agrees with a humorless chuckle.

He shifts his face ever so slightly and his lips brush against hers. It sends a shiver through her whole body and she doesn't resist when he kisses her a little longer, a little harder. Her arms stay crossed over her chest but she sways into him when he returns a third time, using his hand to guide her mouth on his. She can't help it. She's never been able to help the way she feels about him.

"Can you forgive me?" he whispers against her mouth. His eyelashes flutter against her cheekbone.

"Give me time," she answers. He shifts back so they can look at each other properly again and nods once. In the hall, the bell rings.

She slips out the door without another word and doesn't see him the rest of the day.

+++

They've held an easy truce for the past year and a half, even something like a friendship at times, but the last person Jonathan expects to see amble up to his house as he's sitting on the porch and staring angrily into space is Steve Harrington. Much less a _smirking_ Steve Harrington.

"What on _earth_ did you do, Byers?"

Jonathan frowns and considers taking up smoking. He wishes he had something to do with his hands. Steve drops down on the porch swing next to him, sending it into motion. Jonathan's frown deepens.

"Word travels fast in this town," Steve reminds him. "I heard Nancy is _pissed_ at you."

He sighs. "Yeah. Yeah, she is."

Steve just looks at him expectantly. In his teenage life he's oscillated between being indifferent to Steve Harrington, hating him, hurting him, empathizing with him, and liking him. He feels himself taking a swing back to hatred. That face is obnoxious, especially because it's working.

"She got into Columbia. I told her I'm not going to NYU."

"Wait, what?!" Steve reels back a little and it feels insulting. "Dude, I thought that was your dream school."

"It was."

"What changed?"

"Oh, y'know. My brother got sucked into another dimension by a monster that was hunting him then possessed by the other dimension's evil overlord and my girlfriend's little brother first harbored and then started dating a telekinetic lab experiment that's still being hunted by the government and also the interdimensional monster."

He keeps his voice perfectly level, perfectly deadpan, and Steve's resulting guffaw is worth it. It makes him feel a tiny bit better, just for a moment. But then the pain comes rushing back, the panic of leaving home, the ache of hurting Nancy, the crushing fear of losing her. Of losing everything. He scrubs his hands over his face.

"I can't leave my mom and Will. I _can't_. And I know I probably have to eventually but it all still feels so fragile, so delicate. Like if any one thing really changes it's all going to go to shit and Will will be taken again and Mom will completely fall apart and it'll be _my fault_. The last time I wasn't here…"

"Man, you know that wasn't your fault." Steve lays a comforting hand on his shoulder, gives a little squeeze. It feels reassuring and that, somehow, feels wrong.

"I can't be halfway across the country when it happens again."

"If," Steve reminds him. Jonathan shakes his head.

" _When_."

Steve sighs, crosses his ankles and uses his heels to move the porch swing back and forth. Jonathan doesn't stop him.

"You can't think like that," the older boy finally says. "You can't just be paranoid all the time. You gotta... you gotta, like, _live_. Take some risks."

"Says the guy who skipped college and went to work for his dad."

"Nah, I quit that job." Steve takes in Jonathan's raised eyebrows and shrugs. "Insurance is boring."

"So what are you going to do now? Finally go to school?"

"School is also boring."

Jonathan can tell Steve wants to leave it at that but he's always been patient. So he waits, an expectant look on his face until he gives in.

"I took the police exam."

That's not what he's expecting. 

"Wait, you're going to work for Hop?"

"That's the plan," Steve drawls, but he's looking anywhere but at Jonathan. Again, he waits, and Steve speaks as if compelled. "You're not the only one who's a little paranoid, ok? Damn, how do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Get people to admit the shit they don't want to admit?"

"Patience," Jonathan shrugs. Steve glares.

"It's fucking annoying."

"That’s what Nancy says, too."

"So what'd she say when you told her about NYU?" Steve asks, and winks at Jonathan's sour expression. "I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, too."

"She threw me out," Jonathan admits.

"And how are you going to make it up to her?"

"I told her I don't want to end it. I just… can't leave." He looks back at his hands, suddenly feeling so tired. "It's up to her."

"She loves you, you know," Steve says after a moment. Jonathan nods.

"I know. I love her too."

Steve lets out a long breath, shaking his head slowly. He rubs his cheek, the stubble there, tugs at the ends of his hair. Then he shrugs and turns back to Jonathan, his expression contemplative, and open.

"You got any beer?"

+++

She misses Barb. That's not a new feeling – she's missed Barb every day since she disappeared, in ways that have ranged from the raw, bleeding wound of her vanishing to the dull ache of not having anyone to ask about her outfit, or where she should go for a dinner date. But right now, she really misses Barb. Because if anyone would understand how angry and sad and _scared_ Nancy is, it would be her best friend.

It's all so unfair. So she sits at their kitchen table and stares into a mug of tea that she _really_ wishes was a beer and talks to Barb in her head.

 _I did that thing we said we'd never do; I planned my future around a boy. Jonathan would go to NYU to study photography, I'd go to Columbia. We'd build a life not on a cul-de-sac, in a city, in somewhere vibrant and new. Just for us. I had it all planned out. And then he decided he's too scared to go to college and didn't tell me and I’m_ fucked _. I'm well and truly fucked, Barb. And that’s why we said we'd never do it; because all it was gonna do is fuck us in the end._

The Barb in her mind nods sagely, but doesn't say anything. Nancy doesn't know what she'd say. She didn't know Jonathan, not well. Not any better than Nancy did two and a half years ago. Any words she could put in Barb's mouth would just be her own, talking to herself through her dead best friend.

She feels tears sting her eyes again and the anger surges in her chest. She's forgotten what any other emotions feel like.

"You're sad."

Nancy almost falls off her chair she jumps so high. Eleven has always been quiet, but Nancy forgets she moves like a goddamn ninja most of the time. All those years of hiding, she supposes. The girl is standing right next to her, holding an Eggo. She might be almost 15 now but some things never change.

She takes a moment to catch her breath before answering.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm sad."

"Jonathan?"

Nancy gestures for the smaller girl to sit and rolls her eyes at the same time.

"So Mike told you."

"No," Eleven protests, then seems to reconsider. "Well, a little. Just that you're fighting."

"I'm going to college. He's not."

Eleven looks very confused. "He wants to go to NYU."

"Yeah, no shit," Nancy nods, trying not to sound too bitter. "He did. But he told them no."

"Why?"

"He's scared. To leave his family, to leave Will. Scared something's going to come back for them. For you. So he's staying here and leaving me instead."

Eleven scoffs at that.

"He shouldn't be scared. I'll protect them," she says, puffing her chest out a little with pride.

"And if something happens to you?" Nancy can't believe she's even asking the question. She's almost defending Jonathan. That's not what she wants to do, not right now.

And then suddenly she's floating in the air, six inches above her chair as if she's sitting on some sort of invisible pillow. Eleven's looking at her, hard, but there's no blood dripping from her nose. Not anymore.

"I'll protect me, too."

Eleven doesn't do this often. She'll levitate Mike's Millennium Falcon to make him laugh, or she'll knock the boys upside the head with a pillow from halfway across the room when they're being assholes, but generally speaking she keeps her powers under wraps for emergencies. Nancy knows she trains with Hopper, hones her skills and grows stronger, but usually she just pretends to be a normal teenager. The normal teenage life she craves. It's safer for everyone, and it makes her happier. Who wouldn't want to be Jane instead of Eleven, a person instead of an experiment?

But there is power that lurks under her skin and it is _terrifying._ Nancy tries to keep her voice steady, soft and calm. 

"El," she says slowly. "Put me down?"

She's set back in the chair ever so gently and takes a deep breath as Eleven takes another bite of her waffle.

"Jonathan worries too much," Eleven says as she chews and Nancy takes a sip of tea. "I see it. When I'm at their house, when I'm hanging out with Will, he watches us. He tries not to let us see but he'll peek around corners, watch us through windows. Like Will's going to disappear."

"I can't blame—"

"He watches you too. All the time."

Nancy feels a flush crawl up her neck. She knows Jonathan watches her. She's caught him doing it a million times. It took months before he stopped being embarrassed by it, let her catch him. Something pulls in her chest and it makes all the sad, all the angry come back. How could he give that up?

But Eleven is shaking her head.

"No, not that way." She looks mildly grossed out, which Nancy finds reassuring. "To make sure you're safe. That nothing's going to get you. That you're not going to disappear either." 

A whole other pull tugs at her heart and Nancy looks away. This makes her want to forgive him. And she's not ready for that yet.

"I can't—" she starts, but there's the sound of pounding footsteps coming up from the basement.

"El? El?! C'mon, how long does it take to toast a waffle, shit."

Mike skids to a stop in the kitchen doorway and looks between the two of them. El raises her eyebrows at him and takes another bite of her Eggo. It's almost gone.

"Sorry," Mike mumbles.

"It's fine," Nancy says with a weak smile. Eleven sees too clearly for a girl her age. Nancy feels exposed and welcomes the opportunity to go back into hiding.

Eleven looks between them for a moment then stands up. She places a hand on Nancy's shoulder as she does.

"Don't be sad," she whispers and turns to follow Mike back down to the basement.

Nancy waits at the table, turning the girl's words over in her mind until her mom gets home. This time when she asks, Nancy tells her everything.

+++

It takes a few weeks. It's brutal, so cold and lonely, a reminder of a past he was glad to leave behind. Eating in his car alone at lunch, trying to slide through the hallways like a ghost. Listening to music in his room alone, headphones on. The phone doesn't ring. His mom and Will look worried, but they don't pry.

She comes over on a Friday night when his mom's at work, warmer than any of the Friday nights before. He's got his window open to let the fresh air in, but she comes to the front door. Will answers and sounds excited, happy, as he lets her in. Jonathan sits on the edge of his bed and wonders if his brother is just being naïve.

When she closes his bedroom door behind her she's wearing a soft cotton dress with one of his flannels over it and has her hair pulled up and the warmth spreading through his chest feels a lot like hope.

He opens his mouth to greet her but to his surprise she slides onto his lap again, knees on either side of his hips. She runs her fingers through his hair in that way that makes him crazy and he feels his entire body shudder. Their faces are so close together but he's looking up at her and there's almost nothing he loves more than being at her mercy.

"You hurt me," she says against his lips. His hands, splayed on her thighs, squeeze as he winces at her words.

"I know," he says. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to."

"I forgive you," she replies. "I love you."

"I love you too, so much."

"We've got four and a half months before I move to New York." She shifts on his lap a little and he groans, slides his hands under her dress to the edges of her underwear. Pauses there, waiting, hoping. "We should make them count."

He moves his fingers another inch.

"Starting now?"

"Yeah," she breathes across his mouth. "Starting now."

Afterwards she turns on her side to face him, head propped on her right hand while he runs his fingers over her left wrist and kisses the scar on her palm. Her hair is wild but her eyes are calm as she watches him.

"This is what I thought it'd be like," she says wistfully. "Only in an apartment, without the threat of your mom coming home any minute, or having to apologize to your brother for forgetting to turn on music. Just the two of us."

"It sounds wonderful," he says, and means it.

"You can't do this again," she says softly. "Lie to me."

"Never," he swears, dotting kisses down to her wrist and back. Traces the scar with both his thumbs.

"I mean it." She is deadly serious and his heart does a little flip flop.

"So do I."

"You'll be 700 miles away." It sounds like she chokes on that a little, voice thickening with tears for just a syllable. "I have to be able to trust you. You have to trust me."

"I do trust you."

"Jonathan…"

For a second he's back in a basement in rural Illinois and a smug former journalist is pouring him vodka and saying _Trust issues, amirite?_ Then he's back in his bed and shifting closer to Nancy, no barriers between them anymore.

"I'm working on it."

She laughs at that, a real laugh like jangling bells, and he's rolling her onto her back, holding himself over her on his forearms.

"And I promise I'll _keep_ working on it. I'm sorry, Nance. I'm so sorry. I should have talked to you. I wish I had."

She wraps her arms around his neck, and the smile she gives him is lopsided and regretful. He knows his smile looks the same.

"Me too," she says and pulls him down for a kiss.


	2. 2. oh telephone line give me some time i'm living in twilight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey look, the story already grew by a chapter. amazing. 
> 
> oh, and the overall rating _really_ applies to this chapter. really applies from here on out, actually. they're adults, after all. young ones, but adults all the same.

Their graduation robes are itchy, Nancy's cap keeps falling off, and their last names are on the opposite end of the alphabet so they're separated by an entire auditorium for the day, but somehow they graduate. 

She's asked to give a speech but she declines. She and Barb once planned for this day, but her dream of it died the day her best friend did. She'd rather someone with their heart in it take the task.

He listens to the speech about their bright futures and tries not to feel like he's made a tremendous error.

After the caps are tossed and families are found, Nancy watches him cringe at his mother's enthusiasm even as he soaks up the attention, and laughs at how panicked he is by Will taking hold of his camera. In turn, Jonathan watches her mother take seemingly endless Polaroids and silently vows to get Mrs. Wheeler a better camera for Christmas.

Their parents have planned a joint celebration dinner and barely given a chance to change into regular clothes before they're dragged to her father's favorite Italian restaurant. It's boisterous and rowdy, Mike and Will constantly being shushed and Nancy answering a million questions about Columbia and what she expects. He drapes his arm across the back of her chair and squeezes her shoulder to make sure she knows it's okay for her to answer.

They hadn't planned on going to any parties but they need an excuse to leave, which is how they find themselves in Allie's back yard with beers and a crowd of classmates getting drunk around them.

She sits next to him on one of the large wicker chairs, mostly on his lap, and tips her head against his.

"Well, we did it."

"We did," he laughs and knocks his Schlitz against hers in a toast. "Goodbye Hawkins High, we won't miss you."

They drink to that. She scoots closer.

"Three months," she says softly. He tightens his arm around her waist and holds her close.

+++

Indiana summers are hot, humid, and still, and this one feels more oppressive than most. He knows it's because of the anticipation, the countdown – ninety days until Nancy leaves. Sixty days. Forty-five. Thirty.

It feels like a death march.

They still have Bob's JVC, have kept it both as a useful documenting device and a relic to a man who was secretly a superhero, who saved their family and sacrificed himself. It's supposed to be a family thing but Jonathan steals it and fills tape after tape after tape with images of Nancy.

Nancy reading on a blanket in the forest, in their favorite spot not too far where she crawled into the Upside Down, her shirt pulled up under her breasts and her skirt hiked up to the top of her thighs. Giving him the finger when she catches him recording. (They know it's a little perverse to keep returning to that tree but they can't help it; they don't tell anyone why they like that place so much and no one asks. To everyone else it's just a forest.)

Nancy sunbathing on the hood of his car in the Byers' front lawn, in a bikini that is small enough that he's glad his mom isn't home and feels he has to chase his little brother into the house when he gets back from Lucas's, to a chorus of _ew, Jonathan, gross, why are you guys_ so gross _._ That makes it onto the tape too, along with Nancy's laughter, and when he gets back to her she's doubled over with tears streaming down her face, almost falling off the car. She teases him mercilessly about it the rest of the day.

Nancy, shopping for linens for the bed in her dorm room, a shower caddy, and other little college-bound odds and ends at the general store while his mother is working. His mom and Mrs. Wheeler walk ahead of the teens, excitedly chattering about what Nancy needs and what she should want, but Nancy hangs back, runs her fingers over sets of twin bed sheets and beckons him over. Asks him which he likes. _It's your call, it's your bed_ , he replies as he runs his fingertips over soft cotton, and she looks up at him through her eyelashes and says, _Yeah, but I want to make sure you're comfortable in it._

Nancy, bare and glowing in the moonlight, skin shining and wet when they skinny-dip in Sattler's Quarry under a full moon. She stretches and spins, and he zooms in on every curve, every dip, every swell of her body, using the camera as much as his eye to memorize it. She catches him filming and charges at him, pulling the JVC out of his hands and turning it off. She respects it – the technology and what it stands for – so she places it carefully in the front seat of his car before pushing him into the water and following him in. She's small, so small, and he's taller than he lets on, so soon the water is up to his shoulders and her feet can't touch the ground. She wraps her legs around his waist and he holds her up, face to face, nose to nose, and they breathe each other in between kisses and touches and he wants it to never, ever end.

"Twenty-three days," she whispers against his collarbone and he squeezes her tighter, as if that will make her stay.

He keeps the tapes in a shoebox next to his cassettes and carefully writes "Nancy" on each one. He chose his choices. The facsimile of her will have to do.

+++

She tries not to get angry anymore, but she gets caught being sad a lot.

That's not to say she isn't angry. She's still furious. She feels it course through her veins when she wakes up in the middle of the night by his side, but more often when she wakes up alone, realizes this is what it's going to be like. No friends. No home. No Jonathan. No dreams. Just Nancy Wheeler, girl in the city, on her own.

It's not what she wanted. Had he let her, it's not what she would have chosen.

They park a quarter mile from the increasingly-decrepit lab in a thicket of trees no one ever seems to patrol and climb into the backseat. He lifts her skirt and drapes in over his head, kissing his way up her inner thigh, pulling her panties to one side to taste her. She sighs and clenches her hands into fists; he does this to tease her, to keep her hands out of his hair, because he knows it makes her squirm. He likes making her squirm.

There's something different tonight, as he laps at her and slides one, then two fingers inside. About the way he moves them, and what he does with his tongue. He takes deep breaths through his nose but it doesn't seem to be enough air because he pulls back, pants against her as she whimpers and pleads for release, then does something wonderful and new with his lips and his hand and she's shaking against him. Through the roar of the blood in her ears she feels him bite down on her inner thigh, hard enough to leave a mark.

He's breathing almost as hard as she is when she comes back to herself.

"Wh-what," she pants as he wipes his mouth, crawls back up her body to kiss her deeply. She can get her hands in his hair now and she does, tugging. His hips press hard into hers and she can feel him clearly, hard in his jeans. But he stops her hands when she reaches for his zipper, holds them above her head against the warm glass of the window.

"I just—"

She can't tell if he's too busy kissing her to finish or if he can't find the words. He tugs on her bottom lip with his teeth and that's what's different, she thinks. He seems sad, too, and maybe angry, and this is intense in a different way than it's been before. Like he's trying to keep her here, or take part of her with him when they eventually climb back into the front seat. Make sure part of him goes with her too. Their hips rock together again and she whines, wanting and wanton.

"I need to remember," he says roughly, keeping both her wrists in one of his hands as he reaches down and undoes the front of his pants. Pulls himself out and pulls her panties aside again. "Everything. You. How you smell, how you taste. How you feel. I need—"

It's rough and desperate and a little sad and it feels incredible. Their clothes are still on, and she hears the seam of her panties rip as he moves in her, but she doesn't care. She manages to get one hand out from his grip and throws it around his shoulders, holding him close, keeping his mouth on hers as they breathe and move and remember, from time to time, that it's even better when they're kissing.

He pants into the crook of her neck after he spills himself inside her and she strokes his hair, trying to comfort him, trying to memorize too. He's not the only one being left alone in a handful of weeks.

"I'm sorry," he says. He says that a lot lately and she wishes he would stop. "I made a mistake. I made a mistake."

She wants to agree. He did. He made a huge mistake. But she also knows that he didn't. She knows his nightmares, his paranoia, his panic. Knows this was done out of love, not out of indifference or disregard. That he still hasn't figured out how to balance his family and himself, and that his need of independence fights constantly with the responsibilities he's carried on his shoulders since he was eleven fucking years old.

"We'll be fine," she says instead. "We're gonna make it through this. We're gonna miss each other like crazy, but we'll figure it out. Right?"

"Yes," he says, sliding out of her as he pulls back a little and kisses her forehead. " _Yes_. I promise. Nancy, I promise."

She's starting to get a weird crick in her neck and the door handle is digging into her back but she pulls him back down anyway, holding him close. This time it's her breathing in deep through her nose, closing her eyes and listing every scent he has – his shampoo, the cotton t-shirt and laundry detergent, the sharpness of his sweat and muskiness of his skin. Their arousal, mixed together.

She's memorizing, too.

+++

Packing up her room is the worst part. He's always felt out of place in that pretty pastel setting, his clothes too dark and his person too weird, but as she sorts through the clothes she wants to take and leave behind, through the pillows and blankets and photographs, he can suddenly feel the distance between them and it feels far too real. He swallows past the lump in his throat. Fourteen days.

"Earth to Jonathan."

He looks up, shaking his head a little bit to snap out of it, and gives her a crooked smile.

"Sorry."

"So what did you have to tell me?"

It feels like he's underwater, watching this, and it takes him a minute to remember he isn't just here for the rituals of leaving, that he called her that morning with exciting news and he's _still_ excited about it. It clears his head a little and his smile evens out, widens, becomes real.

"I quit my job at the Hawk."

"What?" She's properly shocked by that, freezes mid-sweater fold. "But… why?"

"Well, I'm not gonna work at the movie theater forever. And I want to spend these last couple weeks with you," he shifts fully onto her bed, sitting crosslegged and facing her.

"And then what, you're just gonna bum around your mom's house?"

"No," he rolls his eyes at her. "I got a job at the Hawkins Post."

She slowly puts the sweater down, waiting for him to continue.

"Staff photographer," he adds. "I think that makes me a professional."

He's got his camera by his side and lifts it while she still looks gobsmacked, snaps a picture he's pretty sure captures her halfway between shocked and delighted.

"That's amazing!" she exclaims, completely upending the pile of neatly folded sweaters in her haste to tackle him. He catches her, holds her close.

This is the first time since March he's felt like maybe he didn't make the wrong choice after all. Oh, he still regrets. He is full of regrets. He misses her already even though she's right here. But he'll be taking pictures for the newspaper, and while it might be his small, shitty suburb's newspaper, it's a newspaper nonetheless. Maybe he can use that to get a job in New York, to meet her out there. Or anywhere, really. He won't just be a weird kid working at a movie theater instead of going to college. He's always wanted to be a photographer. Now he gets to be one.

When they pull back from the hug she's smiling as wide as him.

"You look happy," she says.

"I _am_ happy," he answers. "It's what I want to do. Mostly, I mean. It’s not exactly a gallery show, but at least it's a real job."

"With a salary and everything?"

"Yup," he smoothes her hair back from her forehead. "Maybe by the time you get home for Christmas I'll have an apartment."

"An _apartment_?" she whistles low. "That's awfully adult of you, Jonathan Byers."

"I'm trying it out, seeing if it sticks."

She shifts in his lap, curling up a little more comfortably, her packing forgotten for the moment.

"So do you have, like, a beat or something?"

"A beat?"

"Like, one thing you're assigned to."

"I don't know, honestly," he wrinkes his nose at her. "They just gave me a start date and a salary. I'm at the bottom of the totem pole, so I'm pretty sure I'll be photographing dance recitals and pumpkin patches."

"Such a glamorous job!"

"C'mon, don't," he laughs and gives her a squeeze. "I can keep an eye on things too. The last time… with the rot, if I see anything like that I can let Hopper know. An extra pair of eyes."

"Yeah," she says on a breath, looks down. He knows she hates when he brings it up, but she knows he's never been able to put it fully out of mind. Neither has she. But he's more comfortable examining it, and she's chided him in the past for dwelling. Well, he says the past. He means as recently as last week.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

"No, you're right. And that's good. This is _great_ ," she nods. "Plus, you'll have a portfolio now. Real work."

" _Real_ work? What do you think I've been in doing that dark room for the last four years?!"

His insulted tone is half real, half affect and it has the intended effect; she laughs and leans him to kiss him and once he's got her that close, well, he's going to make sure she puts off packing for a little while at least.

They have to re-fold the sweaters but he feels lighter when they do.

+++

The day she leaves feels like the second most devastating day in her life, right behind the night she learned Barb was dead.

They clutch at each other in her driveway, as if they hadn't just spent the last 24 hours together, as if their parents hadn't finally given their full blessing and their proper privacy to spend their last moments together.

Steve throws her a small goodbye party, the three of them in the tiny apartment he's renting on his new police salary. They drink beers and reminisce through stories and Steve doesn't even blink when they bail on him early to go back to her house. They barely sleep, spend every second memorizing everything there is about each other. Scents and tastes and touches but also words and sounds. He gives her a parcel of mixtapes, one for the night she leaves and another for almost every week before Thanksgiving, his massive tornado of emotions distilled to 46-minute parcels.

They whisper secrets into ears and mouths and skin, and make promises. Promises count. Friends don't lie.

She holds Holly and Mike close, demands they call, ruffles their hair and tells them to be good. Her father is already behind the wheel of the car and her mother is standing inside the open passenger door. It's just about twelve hours perfect to New York City and while they'll stop, they have to start to get even halfway. Jonathan stands at the trunk of the car scuffing the toes of his Chucks into the asphalt and she stares hard at him, taking in everything she can. This has to last her.

They've been together now almost two whole years but they approach each other like baby deer, unsure and unsteady. Wary, almost. He opens his arms and she flies into them.

"I love you," she whispers into the sharp angle of his jaw. "I love you, I love you."

"Call me." His voice is urgent, panicked almost. "Fuck, Nancy."

"We're gonna be okay," she says, willing herself to believe it.

"I love you," he tells her and pulls back to kiss her hard. Distantly, she hears her mom climb into the car and close the door. He pulls back and presses kisses all over her face and then smiles, big and proper.

He doesn't gift the big smiles often, and she runs her fingers over his cheeks, memorizing the feel of it.

"Be amazing," he says and presses a hard kiss to her mouth. "I'll see you soon, I promise."

"You promise."

"I promise."

Her father honks the horn of the car.

" _You_ be amazing," she says as she takes the smallest step back. He grasps at her waist a little and she feels his fingers disengage, one by one.

He holds the backseat passenger door open as she climbs in, then closes it softly. She gives him a watery smile and a small wave, and the car pulls away.

He stands in the driveway, watching them leave the cul de sac, turn left towards the highway, fade from sight. He feels odd, like he can't quite catch his breath and the world has suddenly gotten much farther away. A hand on his shoulder brings him out of it.

Mike is looking at him, just about as tall as he is and obviously concerned. He find it disconcerting that his brother and his friends have all shot up like weeds and dared to be his equals.

"You alright?" Mike asks. Jonathan smiles at him, thought he knows it's weak.

"Yeah," he says and squeezes Mike's shoulder in return. "Yeah, I'm alright. You?"

"Yeah," Mike says and looks wistfully down the driveway. "She'll be home for Thanksgiving."

"She will," Jonathan agrees. "You guys coming over this weekend?"

"Probably," Mike says, and his smile is a little wider.

"See you then."

Jonathan climbs into his car with shaking hands and doesn't turn on the radio on his way home.

Nancy stares blankly out the window as her father navigates them out of town and onto the highways. It's only when he takes the exit east that she curls up in a ball and lets the tears fall.

She might never tell them, but she's never felt more grateful to her parents than she does when they don't comment and just let her cry.

+++

It's dusk when Joyce gets home from work, the sun setting in the woods behind her little house. She's not expecting anyone to be home – Will is at Dustin's, Jonathan with Nancy – but to her surprise the porch light is on and so is the lamp in the living room. It makes her curtains glow an inviting shade of orange.

Maybe Will and the boys got done early, and he came home. Or maybe Hopper swung by, he's got a key. She pushes down the quiet panic rising in her chest, admonishing herself. Almost two years. She's got two kids. There are plenty of completely normal reasons for the lights to be on when she gets home after work.

Still, she's surprised by the scene she's greeted with when she opens the front door.

Jonathan is stretched out on the couch, barefoot and bundled in his favorite sweater even though it's still summer. She takes a moment to really see how much he's grown; how broad his shoulders have gotten, how his feet hang fully off the arm of the sofa. Not her boy anymore, a young man. He's facing the wall where her stereo sits, watching the record spin steadily on the turntable. _Her_ turntable. The music is playing loud enough to fill the room, but not so loud as to bother anyone. And it's _her_ music. She knows this record.

"Hey Mom," he says as she closes the door behind her, but doesn't turn. Keeps his eyes firmly on the wallpaper. His voice is hoarse, rough, like he's been crying.

"Hey kiddo." She sets her purse down and walks over to him, perching on the coffee table. He still doesn't look at her, but she can see the streaks on his face and how red his eyes are. She runs her hand over his hair and he lets out a watery chuckle.

"That obvious, huh?"

"You're listening to my E.L.O. records in the living room," she points out and he laughs again, a little fuller this time. "It's kind of a dead giveaway. Nancy's on her way to New York?"

"She is."

She's silent, patient. Will she can tease and prod, but Jonathan is a softer soul with a thicker shell. She learned years and years ago that he just needs a little time and he'll open up on his own. She counts the seconds, places a silent bet on fifteen.

Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen—

"Did I make a mistake?"

He must really be hurting if he's coming in early. She considers his question.

"That's not really for me to decide," she finally answers, and he turns to look at her. The look on his face breaks her heart. "Do you think you made a mistake?"

"Yes," he says immediately, then frowns. "No. I don't know. I really don't know."

"Why don't you know?"

"I miss her," he admits quietly. "She's been gone a few hours and I miss her already. And I don't know—I forgot how to do all this without her."

Joyce can't quiet keep the smile off her face, but she hopes she tamps it down enough to be respectful. She always wanted her oldest son to find this kind of love, but she wasn't sure if life had been kind enough to him to let him. She's glad she was wrong about that.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

He sits up, making room for her on the sofa next to him, and she moves to his side but keeps her body angled to him. Holds his gaze.

"If you could change everything, take back declining your admission, leave for NYU tomorrow, would you be going for you? Or would you be going for Nancy?"

He opens his mouth immediately but no sound comes out and he closes it again. She watches his brow furrow as he puzzles it over. A feeling of overwhelming pride washes over her, though she's not quite sure why. It's not important, really. She's always proud of him.

"For Nancy," he says after a long silence. "I'd be going for Nancy."

"I know you love her." Joyce reaches out and takes her son's hand. "But you can't live your life for other people. You can't do things to make yourself unhappy just to please them."

She wishes she knew this topic less intimately. Wishes she didn't recognize the offense that springs into his expression. She knows she made that exact face at his age. She knows where it led her.

"I'm not saying Nancy is demanding you do what she wants," she says before he can protest. "I know it's not like that. But if you went and were miserable, what would that do to you two? You'd resent her. Maybe she would resent you too. It would poison the well, poison everything you two have. And you two have a lot for such a young couple, Jonathan."

He drops her gaze, looking at their hands as he chews on that and she feels another wave of warmth wash over her.

"Yeah," he whispers after a moment and nods to himself. When he looks back up at her his eyes are clearer and his smile is a little more true. "Yeah. You're right."

"Of course I am, I'm your mom," she grins and pats his hand. Stands up and walks to the kitchen. On impulse she grabs a couple of juice glasses and a bottle of wine from the kitchen cabinet. It feels like the right time for this.

Jonathan looks confused when she comes back out to the living room, hands him the cups and efficiently uncorks the bottle.

"Um," he says as she pours them each a glass and takes a seat beside him again.

"I think we could both use a drink. I'll start dinner when Will gets home," she says and clinks the rim of her glass against his. Takes a sip. "Plus, we really need to talk about your knowledge of E.L.O."

He laughs into the glass, leaning into her side and resting his head on her shoulder. She tips her head on top of his for a moment then pulls away.

"When was the last time you listened to _Eldorado, A Symphony_?"

"Ugh, Mom! That album's terrible."

"Ugh, who raised you?"


	3. 3. tonight i think i'll walk alone, i'll find my soul as i go home

New York City is big. And bright. And crowded. And loud. 

She knows he'd _love_ it.

Her, well, she's trying.

Columbia has a beautiful campus, majestic architecture and a surprising number of large green spaces. (Suburban girl she is, she always imagined New York as unbearably cramped but there are different kinds of large, she's learning.) There is a stunning park and cathedral near by. The subway is too.

Her roommate is sweet. Fun and funny, genuinely interested in her life, in wanting to be her friend. She's grateful for it. Nancy's never had a sister close to her own age, will never have the chance to do this with Holly, but when she and Claire whisper to each other from across the room late at night, missing home together, she feels a little more okay. A little less weird.

Claire is homesick too, which helps. She's from Massachusetts, which is so much closer than Indiana, but her boyfriend is in Texas now and she's also feeling alone. Neither of them sleeps very well the first couple weeks and one night they slip out of their dorm room and walk down to Tom's Restaurant at four in the morning. They order hash browns and coffee and a Belgian waffle piled high with whipped cream and strawberries and let the words come spilling out. It's not like with Jonathan – she can't tell Claire everything, certainly can't say why the screeches of unmaintained brakes and squeals of car tires in the middle of the night sometimes send her scurrying, terrified, to the pay phone in the empty hallway. But she can talk about missing him, missing home, and not feel silly. Claire feels the same way.

The other students are nice, they're smart, they're more like her than she'd expected. No one seems fazed if she passes on going out to study, or if she turns down a party. They seem to get it.

It's a relief, because while she's certainly not about to start failing classes she's also not exactly studying.

At Hawkins High the goal was simply to be the best. Highest GPA. Perfect test scores. Unimpeachable attendance record. That last one started to slip around the time she discovered monsters were real and the weird Byers boy was cute, but the rest of it had been like the brass ring on a carousel – right there, in reach, hers to grasp if she wanted it. And Nancy Wheeler _always_ got what she wanted.

But college is different. Problem sets have been replaced by piles of reading, classes center around discussion and debate. There are no right answers anymore, just good arguments and critical thinking, and it's frustrating. She wants to be praised, wants to be correct, but "correct" has been exposed as an abstract concept and she hasn't fully grasped the thing in its place. Nor does she want to pursue objective correctness into pre-med or research science. It doesn't feel right.

Nothing, she has to admit, feels right. She realizes now she thought only of the end of high school, of the concept but not the reality of college, and nowhere past that. She's not sure what she wants to happen next.

She tries not to let on how rudderless she feels, but it's hard. Her mom has noticed; Nancy hears the concern in her voice every time they talk. She knows her mother thinks this has to do with Jonathan, with romance, but that's really not it. Nancy just feels a bit lost, is all.

Mike notices too, and she's so much worse at lying to him.

"Is this still about Jonathan?" he asks her one night. She can hear Dustin and Eleven arguing behind him about something, but even with his friends there he never passes up a chance to talk to her when she calls. It's a wonder, how much their relationship has changed over the years. She's glad for it.

"No," she answers honestly. "I just feel… I don't know what I'm doing here."

"At school?"

"Yeah."

"But," he pauses, perplexed. "But, Nance. You're the best at school."

She laughs at that, feels a warmth spread through her that's been too absent lately.

"Not anymore."

"Bullshit," her brother says. "You just haven't found the right classes yet, or something."

"I don't know what I want to do," she admits, sighing. "I don't know what I'm working towards."

The argument in the background grows louder, angrier.

"Shit," Mike says, sounding distracted. "I gotta break this up. Sorry, Nance. We'll talk soon. I miss you!"

"I miss you too, Mike," she says softly, holds the phone to her ear after the click of him hanging up until the angry tone of a disconnected line takes over. Her room is quiet, empty. Claire went to class, then the library; midterms are only a week or so away. Nancy should be studying. Should be reading. She has papers to write.

She has three framed photos on the small desk at the end of her bed on her half of her room, all three taken by Jonathan. The first is of the boys, Will and Mike and Dustin and Lucas sitting around the card table in her basement, mid-D&D game. Mike's eyes are barely visible over the top of his dungeonmaster's book or manual or whatever it is, sparkling and mischievous. Will, Dustin and Lucas are all leaning forward mid-decision, brows furrowed in concentration. An empty blanket fort is just barely visible in the background.

The second is of a family dinner, one of the first he'd been invited to. Her mother's cooking covers the table, arranged just so, and she's setting down glasses of water. Nancy is arguing with Mike about something, her father is reading a folded newspaper next to his plate. Holly is watching them all with something like amusement. They were all waiting for him to get there. He blamed that roll of film for his lateness and swore he wasn't nervous even as she laughed and called him a liar.

The third is of the two of them, a little out of focus and motion blurred. Just their faces, pressed tight together. His hair is a disaster and so is hers and if you were able to zoom out a little further you'd see they were in his bed, cozy under the covers. She had reached for his camera, lifted it into the air and aimed it at them, snapping pictures at random. He protested – protested being the subject, protested her technique, protested the waste of film. She shushed him and kept adjusting herself next to him until she seemed to spark something in him and he took the camera out of her hands and rolled on top of her and she forgot all about it until the next time she met him in the dark room.

Most of the pictures were awful and her finger was somehow in the way for half of them, but this one had stolen both their breath. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are sparkling; his smile is wide and joyful, his guard fully down. He'd printed it and framed it, one for each of them, and given it to her wrapped with a bow on a Thursday "just because."

She misses him, but it's not his face she's looking at; it's hers. She looks so relaxed, so happy, so sure. She can't remember the last time she felt like that. The longer she looks at herself, the harder the rock in the pit of her stomach becomes. The more her heart pounds. The more she feels a thought bubbling up inside her that she wants to push away.

She switches focus, runs her fingertip over his face behind the glass, taps on his smile, then sighs. Pulls the course catalog onto her lap from where it was resting at the foot of her bed. She flips to the Spring 1987 section, and starts looking for answers.

+++

Hawkins is eternally busy with the most random shit. Jonathan's now photographed two school spelling bees, a fall festival, three mayoral groundbreakings for buildings he's pretty sure the town doesn't need and will never build, and a feature article about the continuing pumpkin patch wars between Merrill and Eugene, which have escalated to an annual contest of regional interest so his picture gets picked up by the state section of the Indianapolis Star and isn't _that_ bizarre.

It doesn’t make him like his shit little suburb any more than it did in high school; he still feels the pull to leave deep in his stomach every night as he's falling asleep. But he _does_ like the job. He likes the paper. He likes his editor. And he finds surprising freedom in his work. As long as he has three or four newspaper-appropriate shots he's free to shoot and develop anything he pleases. Artistic silhouettes of the mayor posing with a shovel weren't what he envisioned as he put together his college application but it doesn't make the photograph any less good.

What he likes the most are the battle of the bands. They're silly teenage things but the kids are into it, on stage and in the crowd. He's gotten a few great shots that he kept for his own memories and uses. A kid with dark curly hair screaming into a microphone. A drummer mid-solo, sticks poised to slam into cymbals. Three girls dancing with wild abandon, hair flying all over the place. Those pictures make Hawkins look as cool and edgy as any big city. It doesn’t matter that the bands sounded like absolute shit – off key, poorly rehearsed, just kids fumbling at being rock stars. In those photos you could almost believe they were about to get their big break.

Those photos give him ideas, but he hasn't had the courage to put them into words yet. He can't shake the feeling he's starting to formulate a plan – and one he'll have to tell Nancy, sooner or later, but he's still shy about it. For now.

Every morning when he walks into the Hawkins Post's office, he hopes to get another one of those assignments. But standing in the small, empty room the Hawkins Police Department usually keeps reserved for the rare press conference or station-wide training, he thinks this one isn't too bad either.

Steve Harrington glares at him. His uniform is neatly pressed, his hair newly cut, the badge on his lapel shines like it just came out of its box. Because it did.

Hopper can barely keep his laughter in check.

Jonathan raises his camera to his eye and snaps another picture.

"You know, if you don't want to look like a sour asshole in the paper you should try smiling or something," he offers.

"Fuck you, Byers."

"Hey man," he lowers the camera, lets it hang around his neck as he raises his hands. "I'm just doing my job."

Officer Callahan guffaws loudly and that makes Hopper crack too, and the rest of the cops fall like dominoes. Steve's glower deepens.

"This is bullshit," he says.

"This is better than any hazing we could have come up with," another cop says. Jonathan snaps another picture of Steve, who looks more embarrassed than he thought him capable of.

"I'm gonna send that one to Nancy."

"Don't you _dare—_ "

"Alright," Hopper interrupts. "Let's get this show on the road. We've all got work to do."

Jonathan doesn't miss his wink, and stifles a laugh.

The induction ceremony is short, but formal, and it's so odd hearing that tone coming out of Hopper's mouth. But Steve stands up straight and looks proud of himself and, if Jonathan's being honest, Hopper looks proud too, and he gets at least half a dozen great photos of them shaking hands and officially welcoming him onto the force.

And then it's done. Jonathan's packing up his camera when Steve comes over and stands beside him.

"This is a little surreal," Steve says, reaching out and tugging on the press pass hanging around Jonathan's neck at the end of a lanyard. Jonathan reaches out and taps Steve's badge.

"Just a little."

"How's Nance doing?"

"Good," he straightens, shoves his hands into his pockets. He doesn't have another assignment until that afternoon, doesn't have to go rushing out, and it's been a minute since they've been able to catch up. "She's homesick."

"Really? For this place?"

"Believe it or not, yes. And, um. For me," Jonathan rocks uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. "And anyway, you stayed. Who are you to judge?"

"That's fair," Steve sighs and takes off his hat, runs his hand through his hair to dishevel it a bit. When he's done he looks a little more like the boy Jonathan went to high school with. "You gonna go visit her?"

"I'm trying, but it's tough," he admits. It has been. Work keeps him busy, far busier than he was expecting. And New York is _far_. Twelve hours in a car, almost sixteen on a bus, over a day and through Chicago on a train. And he can't afford a plane ticket. He tells Steve all this, frowns at his skeptical expression.

"It's _four hundred dollars_ ," Jonathan says again. "You know, not all of us are rich."

"It just seems like the kind of thing you make happen if it matters to you, that's all."

"Come on, of course it matters to me. But I can't just go for a weekend. It'll take me most of a day to get there in the first place, and back. So it's tough. I'm trying to figure it out."

"Can't you take some time off work?"

"Yeah, they give the new kid time off _all the time_ ," Jonathan shoots back, sarcasm dripping from each word. Steve gives him the finger.

"You don't have to be a dick."

"I'm just frustrated," he admits, shoulders his camera bag and starts to leave the room. Steve follows, leering.

"I can imagine."

Jonathan glares and Steve laughs, stopping at the desk that has now been designated his. Jonathan lets a smile peek through again.

"Seriously, congratulations," he says. Steve smiles back.

"Thanks, Byers."

Still, Steve's questions knock around in his brain in the drive back to the newspaper. It stays with him in the black room as he develops the film, in the dark room as he makes a contact sheet. At his desk as he examines the sheet through his loupe, circling the best photos for the paper in red and the ones he wants to send to Nancy in blue. As he knocks on his editor's door and hands the sheet over to him.

He hates, it how limited he feels. How _stuck_. If it's not the panic of losing his family, it's the reality that there's nothing to spare. That even with the best-paying job he's seen, by far, in his short life all he's really got to show for it is a press pass and less worry lines on his mother's forehead. That the meager savings he has falls far, far short of what it would take just to visit his girlfriend for two days.

He know Nancy thinks he gave up when he said no to NYU and resigned himself to life in Hawkins, to his bedroom in his mother's house and his little brother's nightmares. That he stopped dreaming. But that's not true; he just shifted his dreams a little bit, molded them to a reality that no amount of monster fighting or beautiful girlfriend could overcome. Jonathan knows intimately how easy it is to dream, and how hard it is to make reality bend to your whim.

He hopes he's learning how to find the middle of that Venn diagram.

+++

Her phone is already ringing when she pushes her door open, breathless from running up six flights of stairs. Claire had convinced her to go out after their classes had finished and Nancy has been promising – promising her mother, her brother, her boyfriend, herself – that she'd give the city a proper chance, spend more time in it, do more things. But of course today would be the day the time got away from her, the one day she actually had a reason to be back in her dorm room, next to the phone, at eight o'clock sharp.

She drops her bag in the middle of the floor and doesn't even bother taking off her shoes as she jumps on her bed and grabs the handset.

"Hey," she pants. There's a moment of surprised silence before Jonathan answers her.

"Hey," he says slowly.

"Sorry I'm late," she gets out, trying to catch her breath. "Claire dragged me out to dinner and then the elevator was taking too long. I ran upstairs."

"Aren't you on the sixth floor?"

"Yes," she hisses and flops onto her back. "I am."

There's another moment of quiet surprise before he starts giggling. She can't stop the grin that spreads across her face.

"Don't laugh at me." She's pouting, but she's not serious.

"I'm not laughing at you!"

"You are!"

"I just love you, that's all."

His voice warms her. She rolls onto her side, glancing at the photo of them as she cradles the phone between her jaw and shoulder so she can run her thumb over the scar on her palm.

"I love you too," she says, breathing finally under control. "Happy anniversary."

They'd waited almost the entire year to talk about it, to try to put a name to it, when their anniversary would be, until November was looming again and they had to decide whether to mark it at all. It is not the date of their first kiss. It's not the date the gate closed, or the date of the first time he snuck into her room without a monster on their heels, or the first time he took her to a movie.

It's the date they cut themselves open and mingled their blood on his living room floor and tied themselves together forever.

That year doesn't count, though. They're not rewriting history.

"Happy anniversary," he replies.

"Tell me you're calling from the pay phone outside and you're here to surprise me and I get to kiss you silly and take off your pants with my teeth."

The laugh that startles out of him is breathy and a little needy.

"I wish," he sighs. "When is your break again?"  
  
"A week 'til I fly home for Thanksgiving." Just saying it floods her with relief. "I just got the ticket in the mail today."

"And you're home for a week?"

"Mmhmm."

"Not long enough, but I'll take it. Do you think your mom will kill me if I just lock you in my room the whole time?"

"And deny her the opportunity to parade us around in front of my relatives?" She makes a face and shakes her head. "I hope you're ready to be grilled about your college decision for at least three hours."

"I have a _job_ ," he reminds her. "I'm a _professional_ now. They've gotta be impressed by that."

"They're not impressed by anything," she laughs. 

"Hmph."

" _I_ think you're impressive." She grins into the phone. "When is your trip to Chicago again?"

A month ago he had called with the shocking news that one of Hawkins' bands actually won one of the battles he's been photographing and was headed to Indianapolis – his first on-the-road assignment. They won there, too, and the next thing he knows he's being sent to Chicago to photograph the championship.

"Friday morning," he answers. "Just until Saturday night, but it should be fun."

"Are they putting you up in a hotel?"

"Yes!" He sounds so excited, it makes her heart swell and hurt at the same time. "Well, _hotel_ might be overstating it a little. Motel. Let's go with motel. I think I'll see Andy and Ben there, too."

Who? The unfamiliar names make her stomach flip over in weird ways. So she asks.

"Oh! Oh, I didn't—I met them in Indy. Andy's a photographer for the Indianapolis Star, Ben shoots in Chicago, for some alternative paper, I can't remember," he says. "We met at the Indy show. They're cool."

Friends. He's making friends, professional friends. It makes her smile, and also a little sad. He's making friends without her.

"I wish I could be there. I'd like to see it." There's a wistful note in her voice she wishes she could hide. 

"Me too, Nance. You'd love it. It's just so ridiculous." He's quiet for a second and when he speaks again his voice is lower. Softer, but not gentle. "Claire still out?"

Heat flashes through her and she shifts on her bed, getting comfortable.

"Yup." She lowers her voice to match his.

"So," he says and she hears his sheets rustle as he stretches out on them and she closes her eyes, imagining his room and his bed and him, probably barefoot, probably still dressed for work but disheveled, his shirt untucked and collar unbuttoned, his hair ruffled, "how much do you miss me?"

They've only done this a handful of times but it's been good, really good. She aches for him all the time and he aches for her, and it all spilled over one night. It's not as good as him being there, but the sound of his voice, deep and hoarse and wanting, as she ran her own hands over her body has been stuck in her head ever since. She can think of worse ways to handle the distance.

"So much," she sighs, squirms a little.

"Tell me," he implores.

+++

The second the plane touches down in Indianapolis she feels lighter. Just acknowledging that makes her feel guilty as Nancy shoulders her purse and joins her fellow passengers in shuffling off the plane.

The airport in New York had been a nightmare, crowded with holiday travelers, and while there's a big crowd at the gate it's nothing like what she just left. She rolls her neck as she scans the crowd for her parents, loosening the tension from two hours of sitting still. Her mother's hair has been growing with each year, and she wonders how much bigger it's gotten in the four months since she last saw her.

There's plenty of hairspray and crimping on display but none of it is attached to her mother's face. She frowns, scanning the faces in the crowd a little more closely, when a hand ruffling dirty blonde hair catches her eye. Her lips curve in a wistful smile as she thinks of him, wonders if he's off work by now, if he'll be waiting at her house when she's finally back in Hawkins. Then her eyes dip lower and she freezes.

A slow smile spreads across Jonathan's face, and he raises his eyebrows at her in the moment before she throws herself at him.

He catches her, and it's like the rolling ocean that has kept her off-kilter and unsteady since August has suddenly calmed to smooth glass.

"Hey," he says into her ear, almost a breath more than a word, and she buries her face in his neck.

"Hey," she replies into his skin. He still smells the same, and she forces the tears out of her eyes. "Oh my god. You're here."

They shift together, pulling back enough that she can take in the subtle changes to his face, the way his cheekbones and jawline have sharpened slightly but his dimples are still there, how the bags under his eyes look mostly the same and, thankfully, not worse, how there's a dark spot on his lip where he's been chewing it, probably while he's developing film. His eyes are roaming her face as well, moving too fast for her to fully catch his gaze, just flashes of the chocolate brown she's seen in her dreams.

"You look beautiful," he says, stealing the words from her tongue, and she presses up on her toes so she can finally kiss him. She feels his smile against hers and tightens her arms around his neck.

He breaks the kiss after only a few seconds and she doesn't bother to muffle her whine, which makes him laugh. He jiggles her a little bit in his hug and then takes a step back, sliding so he has one arm tight around her shoulders as he maneuvers them through the crowd and towards baggage claim. They fall into step together almost instantly. She tightens her arm around his waist and tips her head onto his shoulder, feeling how solid he is, marveling that he's here.

"Did you plan this?" she asks. He just grins at her. "I talked to mom last night, she said they'd be here to pick me up, they didn't even mention you."

"C'mon Nance," he laughs. "Do you really need me to explain a surprise to you? You're supposed to be the smart one in this relationship."

"I _know_ what a surprise is, I just didn't expect—" she cuts herself off, tries to figure out how to say this without digging herself in deeper. "I mean, I thought—no one said—"

"Yes," he says slowly, eyes glittering with mirth. "That's how a surprise works."

"Oh, don't laugh at me!"

"I can’t help it, you're funny," he chuckles, and she retaliates like the mature young adult she is and sticks out her tongue at him.

He looks away from her, checks around him like he's searching for something, before steering her over into a corner by an empty bank of pay phones just before the luggage carousels.

"What—" she starts to ask, but he presses her into the corner and swallows her question.

She wastes no time parting her lips for him, sliding her hands up and into his hair. His thigh slides between her legs and she arches against him. He kisses her like he's drowning and she's air, and clutches at her lower back. Her head spins, seconds stretch into hours, and the rest of the world falls away.

They're panting when he pulls back, dotting kisses along her jaw, and she wonders if there's a supply closet anywhere nearby and how much trouble they'd get in if they got caught having sex in an airport. Is that a _federal_ crime?

"We should get my suitcase," she says instead, not missing the breathless note in her own voice.

"Mmm," he agrees, dragging his nose across her cheek on his way back to her mouth. She doesn't try to stop him, just tilts her head at a more inviting angle and slides her hands down from his hair to his hips, pulling him closer. One of his hands slips into her coat and under the hem of her sweater, working its way up her bare back. A shudder runs through her when his fingertips travel up her spine. The roar of her pulse in her ears drowns out the sounds of the airport.

"Jonathan," she whispers, tries to keep it from becoming a moan as her head spins and swims.

"I know," he says, but he's barely pulled back and each syllable is another brush of his lips against hers. Heat pools in her core and she's having a very hard time keeping her head on straight. "I just missed you."

"So much," she agrees, unable to stop herself from chasing his mouth, swiping her tongue across his bottom lip. In the back of her head she starts planning her phone call to Hopper when they're arrested for indecent exposure.

He kisses her one more time, hard, then leans his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. She watches him, drinks in the way his eyelashes fan out on his cheeks. She's always been envious of how long they are, how delicate.

"There's a dozen people at your house," he warns her softly. "My mom and Will, too. Your mom sort of made this into a _thing_."

"Of course she did," Nancy laughs, and slides her hands from his hips all the way around his waist, clutching him close. "We could run away?"

"Your mom would kill me."

"Not if she can't find us."

"See? The smart one," he smirks, but removes his hand from under her shirt and his leg from between hers and takes a step back anyway. Reaches out to take her hand and tug her away from the wall. She runs her free hand through her hair to urge it back into place as they finish their walk to the baggage claim.

He insists on carrying her suitcase to his car, which is parked at the far end of the lot as usual and while she teases him about it, the familiarity of it makes something inside her tighten and then release.

She rolls down her window on the highway, sticking her head out and letting the wind whip her hair into a riot. She can smell fallen leaves and a hint of fireplace smoke, exhaust from cars mingling with freshly razed cornfields. It smells like home.

She keeps a hand on the nape of Jonathan's neck as Hawkins approaches, playing with his hair and stroking his skin. They've kept up a steady stream of stories since they left the airport, but she falls silent as she eyes the familiar tree line and wide open sky. She watches all the landmarks she thought she hated come back into view; the entrance to Main Street, the silhouettes of the schools, Mrs. Rierden's eternally-present, ever-terrifying garden gnome collection.

A New Order tape she's heard in this car a million times plays softly in the background and she feels pieces of her soul she hadn't noticed shifting out of alignment move back into place. She takes a long, deep breath through her nose, a deeper breath than she's drawn and months, and releases it as a sigh.

Jonathan glances over at her, plucks her hand from his neck and laces their fingers together tightly.

"You okay?" His question surprises her.

"Yeah," she assures him. "Yes. It's… it's good to be home. I missed it."

"Really?"

The skepticism in his voice makes her want to snap at him; if he hates Hawkins so much why did he stay? But it's not fair and it's not what he means. She knows he's thinking of the New York City of his dreams, the skyscrapers and art galleries and rock clubs, the effortlessly fashionable youth and nonstop motion. She can't deny the romance of his fantasy, but she knows now how much of a fantasy it really is.

"Really," she answers instead and gives his hand a squeeze as he pulls into her cul-de-sac. Her parents' driveway is completely full and he has to park almost an entire house away. "Oh, Jesus."

"Yeah." He winces as he gets her suitcase out of the trunk and they approach the house.

Nancy can hear the chatter inside, can see through the living room window that her mother has laid out her best spread of finger foods and filled her prized crystal punch bowl with something that is, based on the sway in her Aunt Linda's silhouette, extremely alcoholic.

They stop outside her front door and look at each other, bracing themselves. It's a ridiculous thing to do – they have fought literal monsters together – and she can't help but grin at him, letting the tip of her tongue peek through her teeth.

"Ready?" she asks.

"No." He rolls his eyes at her and leans in to brush one more kiss onto her lips. "Your mom is crazy."

"Believe me, I know—"

Before she can say anything more the front door flies open and Mike lets out a whoop of glee.

"She's here!" he shouts and sweeps her into a hug and that's the last moment she has alone for hours.

+++

He struggles slightly as he pulls himself onto the roof outside Nancy's window an hour after the welcome home party officially ended, and marvels a little at that. Sneaking into her bedroom had become a well-practiced routine very, very quickly after their visit to Sesser, Illinois, and by the end of high school he could get in and out practically in his sleep. But it's been months and it feels both familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

He's extra careful not to make any noise.

Her window is open, as he expected, and she's on the bed, as he expected, but she's not wearing any of her parent-approve nightclothes; instead, she's got on his favorite threadbare Clash shirt that he's been looking for for _ages_ and, if he's seeing clearly in the dark, not much else. She's sitting crosslegged, waiting for him.

He clears her windowsill and freezes, drinking in the sight of her. She seems to glow in the darkness and her eyes shine like moons.

"Come here," she says softly and he's helpless to do anything other than obey. She stands to meet him, reaches out and fists her hands in the front of his sweater and pulls and then her lips are crashing into his an his entire world shrinks to her, only her.

He wants to take his time with her, wants to taste every inch of skin, drink in her flavor and her scent, but it's been too long and neither of them can slow down. The last time he remembers feeling like this is the first time they slept together, the desperate movements of teenagers in a stranger's basement, a year of tension and wanting and longing finally snapping.

He doesn’t know how she gets off his jacket and sweater, can only feel how hot her mouth is as she traces her tongue down his neck and to his chest, leaving a burning trail across his skin. He tries to distract her, to gain the upper hand once more, but she's focused in a way he's rarely seen. She strokes him through his jeans and then inside them, makes his clothes disappear and maneuvers them so he's sitting against the pillows piled against her headboard and buries her face in his lap. Her mouth is even hotter as it envelops him and he gasps loudly once before remembering where he is and biting his lip to keep quiet.

He fists one hand in her sheets and the other in her hair and hangs on for dear life. It is a wonder he forgot how good she is; it is a wonder she is back in his arms where she belongs.

He tugs gently on her hair when he feels himself careening toward the point of no return, gulping down air like he's run a marathon, and tries not to come just from the incredibly pleased look on her face when she pulls away.

"Nancy," he says hoarsely, reaching for her, and she shuffles up until she's straddling his lap like she does in his dream and when he brushes against her he confirms that yes, yes, she is only wearing his t-shirt, and he's going to take care of that too.

He pulls it over her head as she sinks down on him and they both moan, then freeze. Listen.

Beyond her door there is only silence and he tosses his t-shirt somewhere behind her and thrusts up into her, burying himself fully. They both sigh at the feeling, and he thinks he hears her breathe something that sounds like _finally_. She sways forward, catching herself on his chest and he pins her hands there, holding her close. She rocks her hips shallowly, making his eyes cross as she leans in and hovers her mouth over his.

"I love you," she whispers and his heart clenches behind his ribs. "I forgot to say, earlier. I love you."

"I love you too." He closes the scant distance between them, sealing their lips together, as she begins to move on him in earnest.

He knows her parents are only a hallway away but he can't seem to keep quiet, can't stop the words from spilling past his lips and into her mouth or onto her cheek, her name and _please,_ over and over _please_ , begging, but for what he's not quiet sure. For release, of course, and her love, but also to be here, be with him, to _stay_. Stay here in his arms, to not leave him behind again.

He can't ask her any other way; it's unfair even to ask like this. But she responds with his name and _yes_ , over and over _yes,_ and he wonders if she really knows what he's asking, really knows how she's answering. If she means it.

She whispers his name and _please_ and _fuck_ , too – _Fuck_ , and _oh fuck,_ and _fuck me, please fuck me, Jonathan_. The last sends his head spinning and he wraps his arm tight around her waist as he teases her breast with his tongue as she holds onto the headboard behind him and doubles her efforts. He moves his free hand between them because he's not going to last much longer, not when she's whispering _that_ in his ear, not when she's so hot and all around him.

He feels her start to shake just seconds before he loses all self control and all he can think is _oh thank fuck_ as he spills himself inside her.

"Holy shit," he murmurs into her neck as they catch their breath, and feels her chuckle in the most intimate of ways. She's gone partially limp above him, one hand combing through his hair as she tries to regain some measure of control. But his toes are going a little numb and there's a cramp in his left thigh he's been fighting for a while now, so he shifts them carefully, sliding down until they're lying down.

When their heads are sharing the same pillow he pulls her duvet over them and takes her in. Her mouth is swollen and her hair is a riot and he thinks she's never looked more beautiful.

"You're thinking corny thoughts aren't you? I can tell," she says, running her fingertips over the silly grin that's stretched out over his face. He shifts a little closer and lays his arm over the dip of her waist.

"Just that you're beautiful. And that I love you." He won't tease her about the silly grin that stretches across her face in response, but he's pretty sure they match now.

"I love you too," she says, but there's something else in her eyes, something cautious and a little distant. His smile fades.

"What?" he asks and tries not to let his worry fly too far off the rails too quick. He's pretty sure she wouldn't have fucked him like that just to break up with him a moment later.

"Nothing," she says, and moves her hand to cup his cheek. But the lie of it is all over her face.

"I can see you thinking. What is it?"

"It's nothing, really," she insists. "It can wait. We can talk about it tomorrow."

"Nancy." His stomach is churning now and he moves to sit up but she grabs his arm, holds him down. Pulls him a little closer. "Just tell me. Please."

She seems to catch what he's thinking and her eyes widen.

"Oh, _no_ , Jonathan—no. It's nothing like that. I swear. It's just… school stuff."

On the one hand, he feels a wave of relief wash over him. On the other, he feels a _little_ insulted that she's already thinking about finals.

He says so and she laughs, shifting so she's lying on his chest with her mouth at his chin. She peppers kisses along his jaw, even presses one in the dimple on his chin. 

"It's really not that," she says between kisses and he closes his eyes, focusing on the feel of her mouth and her skin and how warm she is, how real, how _right there_.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to…" he trails off, because he's not sure exactly what he did but he's pretty sure he broke the spell. He feels her hair move against his cheek as she shakes her head.

"You didn't. I was just thinking about how good it is to be here." His eyes open at that and she's staring down at him, her eyes so blue and so clear. He cups her cheek as she speaks, feels her jaw move. "How much I want to stay."

"In Hawkins?"

"No, not exactly. But New York…" she sighs, breaks eye contact and looks somewhere just beyond him. "I don't think I like New York."

He didn't expect to hear that. Guilt floods him.

"Is it because—"

" _No_." Her eyes snap back to his. "It's not because of you. I don't know… I don't know if I'd like it more if you were there, or if I'd still feel like this. But it doesn't feel—it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like _me_. It's so, so…"

She's casting about for words and he's not sure what to do, so he lifts a hand and starts to rub soft circles on her back, on the skin exposed above the edge of the duvet. He can feel her start to relax under her touch and her words come together again.

"You were right," she says. "It's frenetic and it's exciting and it sure as hell never sleeps, but it also doesn't stop, and it doesn't _care_. No one looks at you twice and that's freeing but it's also so lonely. Not lonely like I miss you and I love you, lonely like I think if I simply disappeared no one would care. No one there, anyway. They're not cruel, but I don't like it. There's not enough space, and not enough... compassion."

Jonathan's spent most of his life trying to slip into the shadows, out of people's attention and to a place where he is left alone; to be himself and to simply _be_. He's dreamed of slipping anonymously into New York, of being part of the foot traffic and the city without having to stand out at all. The idea has always been inviting to him; what Nancy's describing sounds as lonely and cold and foreign.

"I'm sorry," he says softly. "I never wanted you to be unhappy." 

"Of course you didn't," she says with a smile and leans in to kiss him properly. "This isn't your fault, Jonathan. It's not even all bad. I think…. I think this is one of those things I needed to learn. For myself. _About_ myself."

"But that wasn't what you were thinking about," he says slowly. He's been watching her for years now, knows what every shift and twist of her face means.

"No," she agrees, then pauses to worry her bottom lip in silence for a moment. He waits.

"Are you… going to stay in Hawkins?" she asks softly. He considers this for a moment.

"I hope not. But I don't—" He presses his lips together, almost wanting to keep the words in. He knows when he speaks them it'll amount to a decision made, and this decision racks him with self-doubt even though he knows he actually made it a long time ago.

Still, he promised he'd never lie to her again, not about something like this.

"I don't think I'll go that far away," he admits. "Definitely not as far as New York."

He can't look at her face; the soft surprise there hurts. He feels something young and optimistic in him die for real this time. He has tried not to dwell too much on the horrible things that happened to his family; once the nightmares faded and Will got better and his psyche began to heal he became determined not to get lost in the horror anymore. It lurks at the edges but he tries to keep it there. This is the only way he knows just how deeply he was injured, and how permanently. It makes him so, so angry.

He drifts far enough into his thoughts that he misses what she says next.

"Hmm?"

"I said, what about Chicago?" She's not looking at him again, instead examining her hands where they lay on his chest.

"What about Chicago what?"

"Is it too far away?"

Chicago is three and a half hours from Hawkins. He knows, because he's done the drive. Four hours in bad traffic. Far enough that he is the fuck out of his shitty little suburb; close enough to speed home in an emergency.

He's been thinking for a while about how Chicago could be damn near perfect. He's been thinking for a while how he might be able to convince Nancy to agree.

All those words stick in the back of his throat as he watches her closely in the dark.

"I—Why, Nancy?"

His hand has stilled on her back, and is now pressing her tighter against him, holding her in place while something begins to bloom in his chest.

"Because," she says slowly, "I've been thinking. About transferring. In the fall."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, guys. I didn't mean to start a WIP and then pretty much immediately go to Japan for two weeks. But that's what happened. 
> 
> I'm back now. Two more chapters to go.


	4. 4. you lost and lonely, you strange as angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh look, this grew another chapter. again. also i suppose it's worth warning that there's some light drug use in this chapter. very light.

Nancy Wheeler is never better than when she has a task. And now that she's said it out loud – now that she's admitted that something needs to change – she can make it real.

All she cares about is making it real.

Finals are a blur. She studies, she writes, but she can't seem to focus, not when there's a new carrot dangling from her life's stick. Whatever free time she has in the weeks before winter break is spent researching transfer requirements at Northwestern and U of C and deadlines. There are essays to write and transcripts to request, but more importantly there are finals to take and ace because if she can keep her perfect GPA here, she should be able to transfer anywhere she wants. 

The application deadline isn't until March, and there's a lot of school between December and March.

Her parents are disappointed in her decision. Columbia is expensive, and plane tickets home are expensive, and _college is not a hobby, young lady, you have to think about your future._ As if their oldest daughter isn't the most serious, studious person they know. They lecture her on financial responsibility and adulthood, and Mike hides his laughter behind his chemistry book, as if he could possibly be doing problem sets instead of eavesdropping and taking mental notes that he can relay back to El when he sees her the next day.

She nods and agrees and repeats the longest words in their lecture in a serious tone and promises that this is the only time she's going to do this, that she didn't know she would be this unhappy, that she's sure Chicago is the right choice. She reminds them that she'll be closer to home, says maybe she can even get an apartment off campus to help lessen the cost, since rent in Chicago is so cheap.

She doesn't mention that Jonathan would split the rent with her. She's pretty sure they know, but her father gets an odd, pinched look every time he hears them talk about living together. It makes her uncomfortable, like she has to explain that she's on birth control and remind him Jonathan has a job.

The words "birth control" are the last words in existence she _ever_ wants to say to her father.

Claire is disappointed, too; she calls Nancy a quitter, though in nicer words.

She knows it seems that way – like the big city was too big and too loud and too hard, and that she just gave up. She doesn't know how to explain how much she misses forests and open skies, or how anxious she feels being away from her family and friends. It's not just Jonathan; she wakes up in the middle of the night wondering about Mike and Holly, about Will, about Eleven, about Dustin and Lucas and Max. About her parents, who still refuse to speak about what happened in Hawkins in a way that makes her wonder just how the Department of Energy threatened them.

It's not the same crippling fear Jonathan feels, but she thinks she might understand a little better what made him make the choice he did. She still angry about how he did it – she could have avoided this mess entirely if he'd just _said something_ – but she no longer thinks he's being a coward. She's called him from the dorm's payphone, frantically whispering down the line at 4 a.m., too many times to pretend he was being irrational.

She brings half a dozen unfinished college essays home with her for winter break.

Her parents quiz her around the dinner table about what courses she's taking in the spring, which credits will transfer, how many extra semesters it will take her to graduate. ( _None_ , she tells them with a sharp glare, her stomach roiling and churning at their skepticism. She's done nothing to earn this. Can't she just _change her mind_?)

Even Mike looks irritated by the time they're finally excused.

She follows him down to the basement, literally biting her tongue until she hers Mike close the door behind them. She picks up the first of Holly's stuffed animals she sees from the bookcase next to the stairs and hurls it across the room. It narrowly misses her brother's prized Millennium Falcon and he yelps.

"Hey! Watch it!"

"Sorry," she sighs and flops onto the couch. "They're being such _assholes."_

"Yeah, but my Millennium Falcon isn't so lay off."

She manages a small grin as he sits in their dad's old Lay-Z-Boy across from her. Mike had inherited the old one when her mom had upgraded their patriarch's favorite napping spot for his birthday the year before; he'd insisted they not throw it out. She doesn't know why, exactly, but she has her suspicions. He had been so adamant and he'd made his demands with a look on his face she knows means this has something to do with Eleven.

"Why are they being like this?" she asks, rubbing her hands over her face.

"I don't know," Mike admits. "Dad was really upset when Mom told him you wanted to transfer. I thought it might be because he was being cheap, but I don't think so. I think… I think he thinks it's Jonathan's idea."

"It's _not_ ," she bites out and slams her fist into the cushion beside her. "Why does everyone think this has to do with Jonathan? Why doesn't anyone think I can make my own decisions?"

"Well, it _was_ Jonathan who wanted to go to New York."

"I'm not some sort of mindless-- mindless… _bimbo_. I didn't go to college for a _boy_."

"You sort of did."

"No, I did _not_ ," she snaps and sits up straight. Her eyes flash fire and she feels oddly satisfied when Mike flinches back ever so slightly. "I know… I know I chose Columbia because I thought he was following through with NYU, but I didn't apply to a single school I _didn't_ want to go to just for him. I _wanted_ to be happy. I'm just not."

"Yeah, but what if Jonathan was there and he _was_ happy? Would you still be transferring?"

" _I don't know_ ," she growls, and suddenly she's angrier than she's been in months. "Why does everyone keep asking me about that? Why can't I just make decisions for myself and have you guys trust me?"

"Why won't you answer my question?"

Because she doesn't want to examine it that closely, she thinks. Because she doesn't want to pick the scab and find in the still healing wound that she blames Jonathan for her unhappiness. That she might resent him, even only a little. The notion makes her a little nauseous.

"I can't answer your question because I don't know the answer," she says instead on a heavy sigh. "I don't know and I can't know what it would have been like if Jonathan was there. NYU is far from Columbia, and college is hard. Maybe it would have made it worse. Maybe I still wouldn't see him, and I'd still be lonely, and the city would still be wrong. And if he didn't feel wrong… maybe I would have been trapped."

"Or maybe you would have liked it. Maybe he's all you need to be happy." He looks oddly determined to get her to admit something. A light bulb goes off in the back of her head.

"Maybe," she says slowly, "but there's more to it than just being with the person you love."

"There doesn't have to be," he mumbles. She wants to hug him, very badly.

"You're worried about you and El," she says softly, knows she's hit the nail on the head when he looks away. "You guys are sophomores, I don't think you need to panic quite yet."

There's a long silence. She doesn't push, just waits, even though she can hear footsteps through the ceiling. She hopes to god her parents don't interrupt right now.

"I don't want to be away from her again," he finally says, almost a whisper. "That year…. It was enough. But she can't dream the way we can. She's always going to have to live half in the shadows."

"We don't know that," Nancy admonishes automatically, then recalibrates at his glare. "Mike, you'll figure it out. You can stay nearby; go to Indy or Bloomington. Champaign's only a couple hours away; you could go to U of I if you really wanted. Drive home on the weekends, things like that. Maybe she could even be safe that close by; live off campus, something like that. But that's not really the point; the point is you'll figure it out and you've got time to figure it out."

"You and Jonathan had it figured out."

She laughs through her sigh and shakes her head at him.

"El and Jonathan are not even remotely the same. She shares things with you – she shares almost everything with you. Jonathan… he's like a turtle. Thick, hard shell for protection, soft and squishy on the inside."

There's a point she wants to make about how he still hides in that shell, is still so afraid of being hurt even after their years together and all the things they've seen, all the monsters – real and psychological – they've fought hand-in-hand, but Mike cracks up at the mental picture and she starts giggling too and like he's been summoned the subject of their conversation comes down the basement stairs, her little sister in his arms and a couple of rental movies gripped precariously in one hand, his brother a few steps behind.

His hair is tousled and he's got the barest hint of stubble on his jaw and like the universe is in on some cosmic joke he's still dressed for whatever job he was assigned to that day, in a simple black blazer and a forest green turtleneck.

Mike almost falls off the Lay-Z-Boy, clutching his sides as tears roll own her face. She tries to hide her laughter behind her hand but she can't. Jonathan looks between them, bewildered.

"What?" he asks, setting Holly down at the bottom of the stairs, even as she whines for him to pick her up again. Will is looking between the Wheeler siblings and his brother, brow furrowed. "What's so funny?"

Mike pulls his shirt collar up to his nose then dramatically sticks his neck out, bobbing more like a drunk giraffe than a turtle, but she gets it. She can't hold back the snort as she laughs harder, curling into herself with it.

" _What_?" Jonathan asks, tossing the videotapes onto the table as he strides over to her and pokes her side where he knows she's ticklish. She curls into herself more, a small giggling ball on her basement sofa. "Hey, stop laughing at me!"

She kicks her foot out to push him away as he fingers keep dancing over her ribs, but he catches it and uses it to pull her to him, maneuvering her so he's cradled between her thighs and on top of her. She bites her lip but still can't stop laughing, even as she looks up into his warm brown eyes and sees them dancing.

"What's so funny," he murmurs, and she shakes her head, refusing to say. Holly is still whining for Jonathan and Mike is still giggling and Will is muttering about how he doesn't know any normal people and _ew, Jonathan,_ as he digs around for the stash of microwave popcorn they keep downstairs.

He brushes his lips over hers but gives up when she keeps giggling through the kiss.

The boys choose Indiana Jones from the pile of movies he provided as they make a couple bags of popcorn, and if he's figured out why she keeps tugging on the neck of his sweater he doesn't let on. They turn off the lights and put on the movie and she waits until Holly, Mike and Will are properly engrossed in the movie before slipping off the couch and crossing to the bathroom.

She closes the door behind her and counts to 30 before it opens and Jonathan slips in.

She winds her arms around his neck as he licks inside her mouth and lifts her easily up onto the edge of the sink. Locks her legs around his waist as he presses up against her as tight as he can.

"Sorry I couldn't pick you up," he murmurs between kisses, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips.

"S'okay, it got the lecture out of the way early," she says against his jaw, dragging her teeth down the column of his neck, only to be interrupted by fabric. She snorts and starts to giggle again.

"Oh come on," he groans, pulling back to look at her. " _Tell_ me what's so funny."

She likes the look of him when he's frustrated, especially when his mouth is swollen and he's breathing hard. She nuzzles her nose against his as she shakes her head.

"No," she says and pulls him down for another kiss. 

+++

Nancy plans methodically, making lists of things to do and people to contact and pros and cons. Jonathan… he's a little looser with it.

He's got a job, for one thing. It's starting to wear on him, the mundanity of his assignments. There are only so many things that happen in Hawkins, and then they just repeat. School recital, groundbreaking, mayor's office press conference, community event, business opening, business closes, lather, rinse, repeat and then do it all again in a month.

It's bad form to want to quit your job after less than six months, but he can't help it. The repetition is driving him insane.

He keeps his eye on other towns, on Indy, on anywhere that might have something fun going on that might be of interest of Hawkins, but his editor has shot down every one of his pitches. Sends him to Big Buy instead for a story about how they expanded their parking lot.

Whatever excitement there was in the first weeks of being a professional photographer, it's been quashed by his shitty little suburb yet again.

Once a week he sits quietly in his room and scans the classifieds in the Indianapolis Star and the Chicago Reader. Andy and Ben gave him subscriptions, leaving his mother to throw her hands up at the piles of newspaper littering his floor and her living room and mutter, _what the hell am I supposed to do with all this_ before snapping at him to clean it up.

He'd thought about asking them to stop but once Nancy said she had her sights set on Chicago, well, the classifieds became that much more important.

His room phone rings on a hazy gray morning in the nebulous week between Christmas and New Years. He's reading in bed, and his mom and Will are up, he can hear their noises in the kitchen and living room, but Nancy's still dead asleep beside him so he snatches up the phone before it can ring again and rouse her.

"Hello?"  
  
"Byers!" Ben's voice echoes down the line. "How ya doin', man?"

He doesn’t really like being called by his last name, but Ben's stuck in the habit and he's so damn cheerful that Jonathan is willing to let him get away with it. For now.

"Hey Ben," he says softly, setting his book aside. "I'm good. How are you?"

"Feelin' good, feelin' fine. Did you have a good holiday?"

"Yeah, it was nice. Busy. My girlfriend's home so it was two houses, two families, two ridiculous dinners. You know. How was yours?"

"Good, good. Michelle and I went to her folks' place in Ohio. There is _nothing_ in Ohio."

"Yeah, tell me about it," he chuckles. Beside him Nancy stirs slightly, shifts a little closer to him and drapes her arm across his lap. He looks down at her bare back and smoothes his free hand along her arm, even as he lowers his voice to keep from waking her. "So what's up?"

"You busy next weekend?"

Jonathan blinks. New Year's is on Wednesday and he doesn't have his assignments for the paper yet, but it's been slow as hell. He thinks he can probably take a couple days off, that Greg might not mind.

"I don't think so, but Greg and I haven't talked about this week yet. We've all been sort of off for the holidays."

"Shit, that sounds nice. I had to trade two weekends just to get a couple of days off for Christmas."

Jonathan makes a face. He knows his sleepy suburb and its little newspaper is a far cry from the real world of journalism in bigger cities; knows that that world means working weekends and holidays and planning any possible vacation months in advance. He's doesn't want that, not forever, but for right now it seems okay.

"But, Chicago. Why?" he asks, returning is focus to their conversation.

"I'm double booked Saturday night at the Cubby Bear and the Metro. I showed my boss what you shot for battle of the bands and he was into it. Wanna come up and shoot for us?"

That is _not_ what he was expecting.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, man! You'll get our freelancer rate; bring your girl and come crash at my place for the weekend. Plus, if you're really thinking of moving up here you should probably get to know the city, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, _yes_ ," he says before the words even fully penetrate his brain. He'll figure out the details later; how to get the days off, how to make sure Nancy comes with him. This is what he's been fantasizing about since Greg sent him to the battle of the bands in the first place 

"Awesome. I'll give you a call once I work it out with Randy, which show you're gonna be shooting and when you should be here. But you guys should come up for the weekend. We'll show you around."

"Thanks— _Thank you_ , Ben," he says, trying not to sound too awed and sincere, but there's a buzzing in the back of his brain that's making his mind go fuzzy. It seems impossible that this just dropped into his lap.

"For sure. Talk to you soon, Byers."

"Yeah," he breathes. "Bye."

It takes a moment to register that Ben's hung up, for him to lower the receiver back into its cradle, and an even longer moment replaying the conversation in his head to realize what just happened. When it finally sinks in his entire body starts to thrum. He wants to shout and maybe jump around a bit but that means alerting the whole house, which he's not ready to do yet. He needs to let this joy leak out slowly. He feels like he's about to burst out of his skin, so he turns and slides down the bed and nuzzles his face into Nancy's neck.

"Nance," he murmurs against her skin, kissing her neck, her jaw, just under her ear. She lets out a heavy breath, makes a sound. "Nance, wake up. Naaaaaaance. Wake up."

"Ugh," she mumbles, tries to nuzzle her face back into the pillow. He peppers kisses from her ear down her jaw until he reaches the point of her chin. "Go 'way."

"Wake up, wake up, wake up," he whispers, pecks her forehead, then the tip of her nose, then her lips. Pulls back for only a second then kisses her a little deeper.

"Noooooo," she whines, even as her back arches and she presses into him. Lifts one of her legs and slides her knee onto his hip and her foot to behind his knee. He kisses her again, smoothes his free hand down her side and onto her rear, pulling her closer.

"Naaaaaancy." He draws her name out on two notes and that seems to do it because she's suddenly kissing him back, using her leg to pull him tight against her. One of her hands works its way between them and grasps him, already half-hard.

"Joooonathan," she answers against his lips. He moves his hand between her legs and for a moment they jostle for space, competitive, until he finds the right spot and strokes her. She moans into his mouth.

"Wanna go to Chicago next weekend?" he asks, bucking into her hand when she twits her wrist and makes something hot and wonderful spike through him.

"Huh?" She's sleepy and aroused and her lips are swollen and eyes are unfocused and he shifts them, pressing her onto her back underneath him and breaking away just for a moment to grab his comforter and drag it over both their heads.

He needs to tell her and keep it secret at the same time.

"Chicago," he repeats, moving his mouth down her sternum and to her breasts. Swirls his tongue around a nipple before popping back up and looking at her with wide earnest eyes. "Next weekend."

He doesn't wait for a response, scoots down her body easily and noses up her inner thigh.

"Wha?" She sounds like she's trying to puzzle out his question and his actions at the same time and getting nowhere. He grins and gives her a long lick, just to make it harder for her, then raises his head to give her an innocent, questioning look.

"O-Oh," she stutters out, hips rising. He holds her in place with one hand. "Yes, sure, whatever, just— Jonathan, _please_."

He suspects she feels his chuckle as he lowers his head back down.

The air under the blanket is warm from their bodies and smells like her arousal and it makes his head spin. He hooks his arms over her hips to hold her close as she clamps her thighs over his ears, breathes hard through her nose and squirms. He can't help but press his hips into the mattress too, seeking friction and relief as he brings her closer and closer to her peak. He feels wild and reckless and just when she's on the brink of coming he lifts up and pulls away.

He almost comes from the sound of her protest alone.

Bodies are instruments and in the last two years he's become a virtuoso at hers. He kisses her hard and slides over her once, then twice, just before he slides in. She keens into his throat, digs her nails into the skin of his hips and clenches tight around him, and he sees stars. 

He won't last long, _can't_ , which is why he's made sure she's already satisfied, and as she pants his name and curse words into the dip between his collarbones he loses himself in her body and spills himself inside her.

" _Jesus_." She's breathing hard as he drapes himself over her, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, over the space between his shoulder blades. "Good morning to you, too."

"Morning," he mumbles into her hair. They’re quiet as they catch their breath. He tries to roll off her but her legs wrap around his waist and she shakes her head.

"Stay here."

When their breathing has returned to normal she pushes the comforter down to his shoulders, inviting cool fresh air into their lungs, and asks, "Chicago?"

"Yeah," he says and when he tries again to roll off her, she lets him. They settle on their sides, still tangled together. "Next weekend."

"I mean, sure," she says slowly, reaching out to try to tame his hair a bit. "But why?"

He can't hold back the smile that stretches across his face as he tells her about Ben's phone call and the gig. She cups his cheek and smiles huge at him and his chest swells with pride and with love and with something that feels, oddly, like hope.

"Yes, _definitely_ ," she says, snuggles into his shoulder and rests her hand on his chest. "I'm so proud of you."

"I didn't do anything." It's reflexive, trying to deflect praise.

"Bullshit." She rolls her eyes, pushes herself up in to a sitting position and pokes a finger into his bare chest. "You know the rule. Take. Credit."

He grabs at her, trying to pull her back down, but she snags the t-shirt he was wearing yesterday from the floor next to his bed and pulls it over her head.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"I have to pee," she laughs and reaches for her underwear.

He watches her dress in his clothes and starts planning how he's going to get them off her again when his mom kills the mood by pounding on his bedroom door with a flat palm.

"C'mon you two, it's almost ten. Up and at 'em!" And then, almost as an afterthought, "I made waffles!"

"We're coming, mom," Jonathan calls and Nancy leans against his bedroom door smirking at him as he pulls on a thermal undershirt and pair of sweatpants. He meets her at the door, covers her hand on the knob with his and presses her against the wood frame for one last kiss. She smiles at him and reaches up to mess with his hair. She is forever messing with his hair.

"You need to brush your teeth," she tells him and slips out into the hallway. He rolls his eyes, stepping out in time to see her disappear in the bathroom door.

"Hey, don't hog it!"

"So who called this morning?" his mom asks, sliding a mug of coffee across the kitchen counter. He spears a waffle from the platter of them with a fork, drops it onto his plate, and takes the coffee with a grateful grin.

He tells her about Ben's phone call, about the job in Chicago, as he smears butter and syrup onto his breakfast, and she cheers and claps him on the shoulder and even high-fives Nancy when she joins them. He passes his girlfriend his coffee so she can take a sip and heads into the bathroom.

When he comes back out Nancy's eaten half his waffle and drank all his coffee and is talking to his mom at their kitchen table.

"Hey. That was my breakfast." He nudges her with his elbow as he scoops up the mug and goes to refill it. She sheepishly slides the plate in front of the chair next to her and tries not to chew. He rolls his eyes and sits down, skipping the fork and tearing off a piece of waffle with his fingers.

"Did you know your mom ran away to Chicago when she was in high school?" Nancy asks him when she finally swallows. He almost chokes on his coffee.

"Okay, that is _not_ what I just told you," Joyce says, rolling her eyes. "We snuck off for a weekend. You two wouldn't know anything about _that_."

He snorts and Nancy kicks him under the table. His mother's eyes are dancing and she picks up her story again easily.

"Me and Betty—"

" _Aunt_ Betty?!" he interrupts before he can help it. Aunt Betty is not his real aunt, though that's how he's always known her. She and his mom grew up together and she used to watch him all the time when he was little, but then she married a diplomat and moved to Toronto. He thinks if you were going to do something like marry a diplomat, you should pick one from a more exotic location.

Aunt Betty was always sweet and kind and dressed in neat blouses with perfectly curled hair, and she always made him put away all his crayons and toys before his mother got home. He has trouble imagining her sneaking away for a night much less a weekend.

"Yes, Aunt Betty. We heard a rumor the Beatles were going to be in Chicago that weekend, that they were getting into town early before their concert, we set out to find them. Neither of us could drive, so we took the Greyhound there but we ran out of money so we had to hitchhike back," she laughs and shakes her head. "I was grounded for weeks when I got back. My parents called the cops before they found my note."

Nancy's jaw is practically on is kitchen table and he can feel how wide his eyes are. He knew his mom had a bit of a wild youth – how else do you end up having Lonnie Byers' kids, after all – but he never really thought about what that entailed.

"Did you find them?" Nancy asks. Joyce lets out a loud peal of laughter.

"Oh, honey, no. Not even a little bit. I don't think they were even there, to be honest. But we stayed in a little motel and ran round the city and snuck into bars. We went to an art show at a gallery and rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier and, Betty bought this ridiculously expensive pair of shoes from Marshall Fields and it turned out that was basically the last of our money. We went to a blues club and danced with strangers. God, we had a _ball_." She chuckles to herself for a second, apparently remembering something she wasn't about to share with her son and his girlfriend.

"Chicago's so _huge_ compared to Hawkins, and it was totally different then; they hadn't built the skyscrapers yet," she says softly, and trails off.

There's a wistful look on his mom's face that tugs at something in his chest. He knows he was an accident; it's pretty obvious even to the most casual observer of the Byers family history. He also knows his mom loves him and wouldn't trade him for the world; she's told him enough times. But he can't help but feel a little guilty, like he stole something from her that she deserved to have, that she's going to make sure he gets even if she didn't. A little youth, a little freedom, a little time and space to make mistakes and figure himself out before life forces him to settle. He wishes there was a way to go back in time and give that to her, too.

Nancy starts interrogating her about which blues club she went to and what they were like. He gets up, grabs another waffle from the plate, smiles at Will as he comes back into the kitchen. He's dressed to leave the house and their mom's set of spare car keys is dangling from his fingertips.

"Mom," Will says, insistent and a little impatient. "You said we could practice today. Can we, please?"

That Will will turn 16 in a matter of months still catches him by surprise. His mom is wearing a different kind of wistful look now, and Jonathan wonders if she's thinking about the driving lessons she gave him.

"Of course," she says, and stands.

"Awesome," Will grins and runs off to the living room to pull on his winter jacket. His mother rolls her eyes, drops her plate in the sink for him to wash. She turns, leans her back against the counter and looks at him standing next to her, at the living room doorway, then back to him.

"Look at you two," she says softly, giving him a tender smile. "Soon you'll move out and he'll have a car and what will I even do? It'll be so quiet. I can't remember the last time it was quiet in this house."

Nancy is watching them, silent, something shimmering in her eyes. His mom reaches out and ruffles his hair, throwing it into further disarray. He wonders, out of the blue, who will cut his hair in Chicago; his mom is the only one who ever has. He never really liked the bowl cuts she could manage (though he figured out how to style it to his advantage over the years), but the thought of not getting them any more feels like he's losing something. He smiles at her as she pats his cheek and then pushes off the counter and walks to the living room. Will whines for her to hurry up.

"If we're not back in two hours, call Hop!" she calls. He feels the blast of cold air as Will throws open the door, hears him mom setting out the rules of the lesson as she shuts the door behind them, and then they're gone.

Nancy stands and joins him where he's still standing by the waffles, slides her arms around his waist and rests her cheek on his chest. He wraps his arms around her shoulders and holds her close.

"You okay?" she asks. He looks down at her, surprised.

"Yeah, fine," he says, his brow furrowing in confusion. 

"You just looked a little lost."

He smiles at her. "Not lost. A little nostalgic, maybe. Things are changing."

She searches his face closely and doesn't reply. Something occurs to him.

"Hey," he says softly, moving his face closer to hers. "We're all alone."

He doesn't give her a chance to reply, just scoops her up and tosses her over his shoulder. She laughs and smacks at his bottom, wiggling but not enough to put her in any danger of being dropped. 

"Put me down!" she laughs. "I need to take a _shower_."

He stops abruptly in the hallway, turns on his heel.

"Good idea," he agrees, and heads for the bathroom.

+++

 

"I don't understand," Nancy says, atlas spread out on her lap. She's looking at the Indiana-Illinois border and frowning, following the path they're taking from I-65 to Route 41. "You can just keep taking 65, it goes right to downtown."

"I have a plan," Jonathan replies for the fourth time in the last five minutes. She frowns at him.

"Want to clue me in on this plan?"

"Well, I was hoping it would impress you once you see it, so no, not really."

She huffs, closes the atlas and tosses it on the dashboard in front of her, but there's a small smile playing at the corner of her lips.

"You're trying to impress me?"

"Always." He gives her a small, shy sideways glance, reaching over and grabbing her hand. She still finds it so charming when he looks at her like before; before they were together, before they were even friends like she is something precious and unique and just out of reach, even though she's been stuck fast to his side for two years now.

She uses his grip to slide a little closer to him on the bench seat, even under the constraint of her seatbelt, and squeezes his fingers. The highway is straight and not very crowded and she eyes his profile until a flash of a highway sign catches her eye beyond him.

"Oh, we're near Gary. You know—"

"Yes, I know Michael Jackson is from Gary," he repeats dutifully. He sounds decidedly unaffected but she can see the grin tugging at his lips.

"I'm just saying that we could probably find his house."

"He lives in Los Angeles."

"The house he _grew up_ in."

"That's weird, Nance," he says, smile breaking fully over his lips as he glances over at her. She sticks the tip of her tongue out of the side of her teeth, winks at him. "What if someone else lives there now?"

"We don't have to go to the door or anything, we can just _look_ at it—"

" _Weird_ , Nance," he repeats, laughing now. "That's weird."

"You'd go to David Bowie's house if you knew where it was."

He opens his mouth, then closes it, frowns. It's taking a lot of her work to hold back her giggles, but she relishes in the uncomfortable clenching of his jaw as he tries to find a way out of her accusation without outright lying.

"I… don't know where it is," he finally settles on and she lets loose the laughter in full, nearly doubling over next to him. He lets go of her hand to point an accusing finger at the top of her head. "And _you_ don't know where Michael Jackson's house is." 

"I know it's in Gary!"

"Plus, I told Ben we'd be there by seven and it's almost six-fifteen," he adds, sounding a little more confident now that he's found a real excuse to deny her. "We've got to get all the way to the North Side."

She snickers a little bit as she settles back on her side of the front seat, one foot tucked in to the opposite thigh and leaning against the door so she can look at him.

"Yeah, so why did you get off the main highway?"

" _Because_ —" he starts and abruptly cuts himself off. Glares over at her for a second before returning his eyes to the road. "You're really annoying sometimes, you know that right?"

She grins at him again, bats her eyelashes. "But you love me."

"I don't know what's wrong with me." He keeps his voice deadpan and she laughs again.

The tape in the background ends, pops out of the tape deck, and he reaches out to flip it over but she bats his hand away and switches his stereo to the radio setting instead. She turns the knob, scanning through the stations, until a familiar shuffling beat emerges from the static. She stops there and leans back, watching his fingers tap along on the steering wheel until he makes a face.

"Nance, not Toto—"

"Yes, Toto," she says and turns her attention out the windshield again. She looks at the buildings, which seem to be getting lower and lower as they approach the state border. Her eyes linger on Lincoln's face on the brown "Welcome to Illinois" sign and then they're on a steel bridge.

She stares out into the inky blackness and realizes Jonathan is singing softly along with the song. _Not quite a year since you went away, Rosanna_ …

"I knew you liked this song," she says softly, smiling at him. He shrugs.

"Knowing all the words and liking are different things."

"Yes, you always know all the words to the songs you hate."

The bridge ends and he stops arguing with her to focus on following a series of odd exists to stay on Route 41. She's somewhat frustrated with this weird route until he makes a final merge and she realizes Lake Michigan is spread outside her window.

"Whoa," she says softly. It's dark but she can still see massive plates of ice floating on the water, even as waves roll in to an almost-invisible shore.

The song ends on the radio and Jonathan's reaching over, trying to tune it and drive at the same time. She reaches out and moves his hand away.

"What do you want?" she asks.

"93.1. It's supposed to be a good station," he answers and smiles at her. "Thanks."

She moves the dial to where he wants it, rolls her eyes as R.E.M.'s "Fall On Me" emerges from the static and his eyes light up.

"You're so _predictable_ ," she teases, even though she loves this song and this album. He winks at her.

"But you love me."

"I sure do," she says softly and returns her gaze to the window.

"Here, look out my side," he says and she turns. Just ahead of them and to her left she can see several skyscrapers just around the next bend. "Sorry, I wish it was the other way around but—well, it'll be a better view on the way home. Have you been to Chicago before?"  
  
"Just as a kid," she murmurs, watching the buildings emerge out from other buildings. "Not in a long time."

"It's not New York, but the view from Lake Shore Drive is pretty impressive."

He sounds oddly tentative as he says that and she moves her eyes from the skyline to his face for a moment. His mouth is tightly closed, his focus solely on the road.

She's seen the New York skyline from a dozen angles now, from below and from above, from subways and taxis and on foot. It is impressive; tall and proud and packed close together like an architectural weapon. Chicago's is far less dense, but no less impressive; here the buildings have room to breathe, are framed by sky instead of half-covered by other buildings. In New York she's always felt like everything and everyone is fighting for space. Here the skyscrapers stand tall and have room to be admired.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and slides over to him, waiting for him to lift his arm before she tucks herself into his side. His car stays steady on the three-lane highway.

"It's impressive," she affirms and tips her head onto his shoulder. "I am impressed."

"Good." His smile is faint, but it's there.

"Where do Ben and Michelle live?"

"Lakeview," he answers. "They said to take the Belmont exit, I think. You've got the directions."

"Are we almost there?"

"No. We're still on the South Side."

"Then I'll grab them in a minute."

They lapse into an easy silence, listening to the radio. It's a lot like listening to one of Jonathan's mix tapes, she thinks, only with more unfamiliar songs.

She wondered a lot, during fall semester, what New York would have been like with him there. Would he have found the smoky cafes where poets form bands with amateur musicians, or the bars that don't card and host live music on Thursday nights. He definitely would have found the record stores. She wondered if he would have met her at the MoMA or the Met, would have paid the entrance fees to walk around with her and look at art old and new, which narrow alleys he would have risked walking down for the right picture.

And she wondered, often, if maybe he wouldn't have liked it the way she didn't like it. If the noise would grate on him, if the crush of people would make him feel as claustrophobic as she did. They're from the same place, after all; would he have missed the open skies and wide streets?

They cruise past downtown – she can tell it's downtown, all the skyscrapers are clumped together here – and she looks at the angle of his jaw against the clustered columns of the Sears Tower, and thinks he looks like he fits here. She wonders if she does too.

"What're you thinking?" His voice is incredibly soft; she feels more than hears his question. She could answer that question a dozen ways, but at least two-thirds of the answers will make him worry and she' snot about to start their long weekend with that. She cranes her neck slightly, brushes her lips just under his ear.

"That this is pretty. That I like it."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

Eventually she digs out the directions he scribbled out after his last phone call to Ben and guides them off Lake Shore Drive and into an unfamiliar neighborhood. He takes a couple wrong turns but eventually they pull up to what looks like a large house with two front doors.

"This is it?" she asks. He double-checks the address on paper, squints into the dark to reach the house numbers.

"Yep. Shit. We have to find parking."

He barely fits into the spot, and she has to open the trunk because he's not skinny enough to fit in the narrow space, but they get their bags out and lock the car and start the short walk back up the block to their destination.

"I can't move all weekend," he says. "I'll never get another parking spot this close."

"Do you think any of these places come with garages?" She wonders, looking at the row houses they're passing. They're not unlike the brownstones she's seen in New York, but they're definitely wider. Most of them seem to have bay windows, too.

"Everyone looks like they're parked on the street, but maybe?" He shrugs.

"Maybe we can find one with a garage."

He shrugs again and steers her up a front stoop. She watches him examine the buzzer and then hit a button. She jiggles her legs and rubs her hands together as they wait for a response.

"Fuck, it's cold," she breathes, but Jonathan doesn't seem to hear her.

"Hello?" the buzzer says. The voice sounds jovial.

"Hey, it's Jonathan."

"You're here! Second floor, my man."

There's a loud buzz and then Jonathan's pulling open the front door on the right. She follows him up, trying to quell the nervous fluttering in her stomach.

"Hey man!" She hears the voice but can't quite see its owner and as she reaches the top step she sees another man pulling Jonathan into a brief but hearty hug. She's not sure what she was expecting but this isn't it; the other man is about Jonathan's height but he's hefty – _burly_ , she thinks – with short hair and a surprisingly thick beard. He's wearing jeans and a button-down shirt and is smiling widely at her boyfriend.

"Nance," Jonathan says and reaches back for her, grabbing her wrist as he follows the man she assumes is Ben into his apartment. "Nance, this is Ben. Ben, this is my girlfriend Nancy."

Ben's handshake is firm and his smile is genuine and she feels her nerves settle a bit. A pretty brunette pops her head around the corner then steps fully into the apartment's small foyer. She looks a little bit like Barb, Nancy realizes, if Barb was brunette and from Ohio and more into hippie-style dresses. She's relieved to find that the revelation doesn't hurt; she just feels a sweet, wistful longing.

"Jonathan, Nancy, this is my fiancée Michelle," Ben says, drawing her forward. "Michelle, Jonathan and Nancy."

Michelle pulls Jonathan into a hug as well and then, to Nancy's surprise, does the same to her, chirping an "It's _so_ nice to meet you!" in her ear. They shed their coats and let Ben hang them up in the hallway's coat closet as Michelle leads them further into the apartment and shows them to the room they'll be staying in.

She's shocked by how much space there is; two bedrooms, a small study, a decent-sized kitchen and a spacious living room with a bay window, all with high ceilings and wood floors. She expected her dorm room at Columbia to be small and she wasn't disappointed, but the few apartments she's been in have also been tiny. She feels a little giddy, thinking about how much room she could have here.

They drop their bags at the foot of the bed and return to the living room. It's pretty sparsely furnished – two small sofas, a coffee table, a stereo set up in the corner, an ancient TV on the floor - but she understands immediately why Jonathan and Ben hit it off. There are posters all over the walls; David Bowie and The Psychedelic Furs and The Clash, all in frames. An old Rolling Stones at Altamont advertisement and a few Bob Dylan records also in frames. She catches Jonathan's fingers and attention as they settle on one of the sofas, and looks between the posters and him with eyebrows raised. A light blush rises in his cheeks and he shrugs with one shoulder.

Ben hands them each a bottle of Old Style and Michelle places a bowl of chips on the table and they settle on the opposite couch, his arm around her.

"Was the drive all right?" Ben asks and Jonathan nods.

"Yeah, fine. We look Lake Shore up, it was beautiful."

"Hell of a view, right?" He tips his beer towards them and they all lean in, link bottlenecks. "Glad you made it. Good to have you here."

"Cheers," Nancy says, and takes a sip.

"Thanks again for the gig, man," Jonathan says after he swallows. "I'm still kind of shocked, to be honest."

"Ah, they'll love you. You're a Reader kind of guy, I can tell."

They chat for a bit about the drive and the radio station Jonathan had requested. After a while, Michelle opens a hidden drawer in the table and draws something out. She watches the other woman raise a lighter to a slim tube of white paper and as soon as the scent hits her nose, she looks at Jonathan. He doesn't look bothered and she wonders what the hell he's been up to since she left for college.

"What do you do, Nancy?" Michelle asks.  
  
"I, um, I'm at Columbia," Nancy says, suddenly wondering how old Ben thinks Jonathan is.

"That's awfully far away," Michelle says, passing the joint to Ben, who takes a pull and hands it to Jonathan. Nancy watches her boyfriend pull smoke from it and then offer it to her. 

"Yeah, but we're figuring it out," Nancy answers absently, plucking the joint from Jonathan's fingertips and raising it to her lips. He's watching her closely.

She's done this a handful of times – once with Steve when they were dating and a couple times in the summer after they graduated, another couple of times with people at Columbia. It was fine, nicer than drinking since it didn't give her a headache the next day, but it's never really knocked her socks off. It's not so much that she thinks it's bad or taboo, it's that she hasn't ever seen anyone be so casual about it, and she was not expecting this as soon as she entered what amounts to a stranger's apartment.

She drags delicately, not wanting to cough, and exhales a thin stream of smoke as she leans forward to hand it back to Michelle. Jonathan leans down, mouth by her ear.

"You don't have to."

"I'm fine," she murmurs back. Michelle is talking again.

"So are you teaching, or…?"

It takes her a second to realize what the other woman is asking. The joint is making its slow journey around their circle for the second time, but she's pretty sure that's not why she feels behind.

"Oh, no, uh—I'm, I'm a student."

Ben's brow furrows.

"Wait, how old are you?" he asks slowly. Jonathan frowns. 

"We're both nineteen," he answers warily. Michelle lets out a huge cough of smoke, eyes wide. Ben looks stunned.

The last time Nancy felt this combination of mortification and amusement was at Murray Bauman's breakfast table and it wasn't a feeling she'd ever wanted to experience again.

"Ben!" Michelle smacks his shoulder. "We are corrupting children!"

"OK, first of all, we're definitely not children. We've both smoked pot before—" Nancy starts. 

"Yeah, Jonathan did this with me _a month ago,"_ Ben interrupts and Nancy whips her head around to look at him. He's got the joint between his lips and he's blushing brighter red now. He widens his eyes in mock innocence and shrugs.

Briefly she wants to strangle him, but she takes a pull from her beer instead. They'll talk about this later, when they're alone.

"Well, this sort of changes what we were gonna do with you," Michelle notes.

"I definitely thought you were at least 22," Ben says.

"I told you Nancy was at college," Jonathan says, frowning.

"I just thought she was younger than you. Michelle's, like, two years younger than me."

"Nope," Nancy shakes her head. Jonathan's arm has tightened around her shoulders.

"Fuck, now I feel old," Michelle says with a laugh, getting off the couch and crossing to the stereo. She crouches over the bin of records and starts to flip through it. "Requests anyone?"

"How old _are_ you?" Nancy wonders.

"I'm 25," Michelle answers. "Ben's almost 28."

"Jonathan's almost 20," Nancy offers, taking the joint from him. The embarrassment is starting to fade as the tension in the air does. "My birthday's in summer."

"That’s not making me feel younger," Michelle chuckles. She pulls out a record, pops it on the turntable, drops the needle. A familiar shuffling beat comes on and Nancy lets out a triumphant "Ha!," practically rocketing out of his arms to whip around and look at him. Jonathan is groaning, one hand over his face as he shakes his head slowly.

"Not again," he says, but she can see him laughing under his hand.

Ben and Michelle look confused but they're smiling as Nancy passes the joint back to Michelle. Jonathan is pointing to the posters on the wall.

"I feel betrayed," he tells Ben. The older man looks even more confused.

"You don't like Toto?" he says. "What kind of monster are you?"

"Yes!" Nancy cries and they high five over the coffee table. She turns to Jonathan again. "Okay, I like them."

Her embarrassment from a minute ago feels remote now; she feels floaty and silly and giggly. She knows it's partially the pot; it feels like something else, too, something she can't quite put her finger on.

"All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes," Ben sings along and Jonathan groans, but she joins in.

"Rosanna, Rosanna!"

"I've made a terrible mistake," Jonathan says and she resettles herself next to him, legs over his lap. He clamps one hand on her shin and rests his beer on her thigh.

"He knows all the words," she tells Ben and Michelle, and Jonathan makes a sound of protest. "He was singing along in the car."

"See, I knew this too cool for school shit was a façade," Ben laughs. "Ain't no one to pretend to here, man. Loosen up."

"Yeah, loosen up!" Nancy echoes.

"That's enough for you," he says, taking a drag from the joint and handing it back to Ben.  
  
"Hey," she frowns and pokes his shoulder. "I'm fine. You're not my father."

An odd look comes over his face just before he swoops in and captures her lips. For a second she thinks he's just kissing her, before his lips part and he slowly exhales the smoke into her mouth. She breathes in just as slowly. They tried this at the bonfire over the summer; it had taken a few tries to get right and once they'd mastered it, well, they'd gotten distracted by the kissing part. She feels herself getting that kind of distracted again.

When he pulls back she's dizzy from way more than just the drug.

Michelle and Ben are cracking jokes about young love just a couple of feet away, but she can't look away from his eyes as she exhales. There's something she can't quite name in their depths, and it looks a little bit like the unnamable thing she's feeling inside.

They adjust their plans for the night, going out to dinner instead of out to a bar, and they chip in for more beer to bring back to the apartment. She can tell why Jonathan and Ben get along; they have an easy rapport and a lot of common interests. Michelle is nice and curious and extremely enthusiastic about Chicago; over Italian beef sandwiches that drip down her forearms and stain the cuffs of Nancy's rolled up sleeves, she runs down all kinds of weird facts about the city, from local lore to famous history.

Jonathan takes over the stereo when they get back and they talk late into the night, until Michelle puts her foot down and informs Ben it's time for all of them to go to bed. Nancy is half-dozing against Jonathan's shoulder and follows him back to their temporary bedroom feeling languid and loose as she closes the door behind her. He tries to bend down unzip his overnight bag but she grabs his arm and spins him to her, pressing up on her toes as she winds her arms around his neck. He falls into her kiss.

"Hi," she says against her lips when she pulls back for air. 

"Hi," he replies, hauling her tighter to his chest. "You okay?"

"Mmhmm," she kisses him again, bites down softly on his bottom lip. "Get the lights?"

She toes off her shoes as he breaks away to flick the switch.

In the dark she lets her fingers wander, taking her time getting him out of his clothes, making him slow as he gets her out of hers. When they fall back on the bed she's grateful to find it doesn't creak.

She thinks it might be the first time since high school she hasn't just loved him, but felt like she is ridiculously in love with him, she realizes. That fluttering, nervous, giddy feeling suffusing her makes her feel like she's 16 again. And it's not that she hasn't been happy, or hasn't been in love with him, but that she hasn't _felt_ it like this in so long.

She giggles as he runs his tongue along the ticklish spot on her neck, dances his fingers over her sides and makes her squirm. When he moves to cover her, she throws her arms around his neck and smiles widely and he grins back, laughing along with her. She's not sure what's so funny but the giggles bubble up and she sets them free, feeling the joy spreading from her skin to his, up into his eyes, deep into their souls.

After she looks at the shadows of the city through the half-opaque curtain and listens to the sounds of the city. It's much quieter than New York; she thinks it would be easy to fall asleep to.

"You okay?" Jonathan asks, lips in her hair. She grins at him, shakes her head.

"You've asked me that a lot today. I'm fine."

"I know this is a lot—"

"It's not a lot. I feel good." She shifts so she can look up at him, and there's something wary in his gaze, mixed with the thing she saw there earlier. She decides to try to name it. "This feels good, right? Comfortable?" 

There's a pause before he answers.

"It does."

"I like it," she says firmly. "I like Ben and Michelle, I like this apartment, I like this neighborhood. I liked getting stoned instead of getting drunk, and—"

"I didn't know—" he interrupts her and she shakes her head.

"Why does that bother you so much?"

"It doesn't bother me it just—" He presses his lips together, looks like he's screwing up courage for something. "It reminds me that you've been gone."

She thinks about that for a moment, even as her eyelids grow heavy and she lets out a yawn. She gets why that bothers him. It bothers her a little, too.

"I don't like being gone either, but I like… I like thinking about making a life here. With you."

His smile is like the sun.

Silence stretches over them and he shifts, turning her towards the wall with the window and spooning up tight to her back and holding her close.

"I love you," he says into the nape of her neck.

She lifts his left hand from where it's draped over her chest and presses a kiss to the faded scar on his palm. "I love you too."

+++

She fires off her transfer applications to Northwestern and the University of Chicago as soon as she gets back to New York after winter break, starts to research the logistics of withdrawing from Columbia and starts that paperwork too.

There's a collection of national newspapers in the vast Columbia library and she starts spending her spare time with the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, perusing classified ads and carefully copying down the details of apartments that sound promising. If she can convince her parents to give her the equivalent of her housing stipend, and if Jonathan gets work, she thinks they could do $300 a month pretty easy.

Jonathan sends her a copy of the Chicago Reader that features his photos and she frames the page proudly, shows it off to Claire and her handful of friends.

February seems to move at a snail's pace, but it's because she's so eager for March. Both schools do rolling admissions; they'll start notifying applicants as soon as the deadline is past. She should be one of the first to get her decision. But the more she wants it, the slower time moves. She feels itchy and malcontent, homesick and cranky. She snaps at her parents, at Mike, at Jonathan over the phone and apologizes for taking her impatience out on them.

At night she dreams of a two-bedroom apartment with high ceilings, of Jonathan cooking shirtless in the kitchen, of her coursework spread out on their kitchen table. She dreams of walking along the beach of a vast blue lake, swimming in the moonlight with no one else around. She dreams of kissing Jonathan at the front door on his way to work in the morning, of him rubbing her shoulders as she studies for finals. She dreams of _their_ house, _their_ bed, _their_ life.

She dreams of piles of rejection letters and Jonathan getting on a plane, camera slung over his shoulder, and not looking back. She dreams of screaming fights and tears and never being able to figure out how to be happy again. She rockets awake in the middle of the night and can't decide which is worse: seeing a monster's face peel open like a flower or watching him walk away from her, never turning back.

She is excited and she is scared and she keeps it clamped down inside because if she tells Jonathan he'll feel guilty, and if she tells her parents they'll feel vindicated, and if she tells Mike he'll just blab to all his friends.

She checks her mailbox every single day.

On March 18 she finds two envelopes inside. She takes them back to her dorm room, sits on her bed and lays them out in front of her before slowly opening each.

When Claire gets home from class she finds Nancy still, fingers steepled in front of her face, staring down at the two unfolded letters.

"You okay, Nance?" she asks carefully, eyeing her closely. Nancy doesn't move for a long moment, then blinks rapidly, trying to hold back tears.

"Chicago rejected me. Northwestern waitlisted me."

"Oh, Nancy…"

It's the tone of Claire's voice that prompts the tears she's been holding back to spill over. She buries her head in her hands; it feels like her head and her chest are going to cave in.

"What am I going to do now?"

 


	5. 5. the lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes

She is keeping a secret from him. He can tell. 

It's not like she's been eager to talk about how unhappy she is at college, but now she won't talk about it at all. Won't tell him about her classes, won't gossip about her professors, and most importantly will not update him on the progress of her transfer applications.

The rock in the pit of his stomach has been growing for weeks.

She's supposed to come home in just days for spring break; Columbia does theirs early, and unlike the luxurious three and a half weeks she got for winter break it's only five days long. He doesn't want her to come home sullen, but he also doesn't want to force her to talk. It's generally not a good idea to force Nancy Wheeler to do anything.

And yet he's running out of options, because he's running out of time. It's been nearly impossible to get a proper phone call in since his work came out in the Reader. Ben's editor loved what he did and has offered him half a dozen more opportunities to shoot concerts in the Chicago area. The pay is good, there's not that much to shoot in Hawkins, and he's hoping he can parlay this into something full time by the time they've moved to Chicago. Or at least enough regular bookings to take care of his half of the rent.

When he tells her this she's happy, but the happiness feels thin, feels forced. She makes the right noises, offers the right praise, but her heart doesn't seem in it.

"Nance," he says. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she replies. "It's just midterms. They're stressful."

"What are you working on?" he tries.

"I don’t want to talk about it." She shuts him down every time.

Half the time when he gets home at night, eyes blurry and tired from hours in the dark room, there's a small stack of messages waiting for him on the bed. Missed calls from Ben, from Randy, and from Nancy. She used to be the first on his call list, but now he has invoices to send, paychecks to collect, jobs to get, and when she answers she sounds sleepy and sad.

"It's okay, Jonathan," she mumbles into his ear as he apologizes for the hundredth time. "I'm proud of you."

_It's not okay_ , he wants to say. _You're not okay. What's wrong? Why won't you tell me what's wrong?_ But the words stay stuck in his throat and instead he tells her stories from her latest job until she's ready to fall asleep.

He tries mining information from Mike, from Eleven, even from Steve, but none of them know what's going on. It's not so much that he doesn't know, it's that he wants confirmation for his worst fears. That she's heard back from both Chicago and Northwestern and they've said no. That she's stuck in New York and he's stuck here in Hawkins, or maybe in Chicago but without her, and that the foundation of his sanity, of his happiness, is about to crumble to dust.

He thought they could do this, but maybe he was wrong. Four years apart is too much; eight months apart has them strained to breaking. And if this is enough to tear them asunder, maybe all his assumptions about their future – the dreams he keeps closest to his chest, the ones with the narrow two-storey house with a small back yard, with the playhouse he builds himself for the little brown-haired children with Nancy's wide blue eyes, with the hallway lined with photos of them; together, apart, with babies, in suits and white dresses – were never attainable in the first place.

He knows that most people don't marry their high school sweetheart, that teenage love cracks and fades, but it's never really felt like that to him. Maybe because he fell in love with her over cans of gasoline and bear traps instead of milkshakes and french fries. Maybe because she helped him burn a demon out of his little brother, saved his mother's life with a red-hot poker. Maybe because when he wakes up sweating and shaking and sure the Gate has reopened itself, she never dismisses his terror as trauma. She calls Hopper and pulls on her boots and takes his hand and goes to investigate.

Because he trusts her with his life more than he trusts himself.

He's been trying to get hold of her for hours now, locked in his room and jittery. On the eighth call, she picks up.

"Hellooooooo!" Her voice is slurred and weird and he frowns.

"Are you drunk?"

"Jonathan!" On the one hand, it's the first time she's sounded happy to talk to him since about late February. On the other hand, she is clearly trashed.

"Nance, are you okay?"

"Fine, I’m fiiiine," she says and he hears the puff of her comforter as she flops down on it. "Claire took me out. She found a bar. A _special_ bar. A bar where they don't care. And it was great! Because I don't care either."

She's giggling but it's not the right giggle, not the laugh he hears when she's actually having a good time. She sounds like someone who's running, who's trying to escape, trying to retreat. He hasn't heard her sound like this since they were making excuses to each other in the middle of the night in a bunker apartment in Illinois.

Something twists in his stomach and he feels slightly sick.

"Is Claire there? Can I talk to her?"

"You don't want to talk to me?"

"Of course I want to talk to you, but I want to talk to Claire too. Do you mind?"

"Fine," she huffs and then her voice is no longer loud in the receiver as she calls Claire's name. He hears the other girl shush her and a brief scuffle before her voice comes down the line.

"Jonathan?"

"What the hell have you done to my girlfriend?" He wants it to be a joke, but even he can hear the fear and anger in his voice.

"She's fine _,_ jeez. Relax, would you? She's just had a few drinks."

"More than a few."

"She's _fine_."

"She is not and you know it." He drops his voice to a sharp whisper, as if Nancy might be able to hear. He can hear her in the background, singing something to herself. He thinks it might be a Cyndi Lauper song but she's too indistinct for him to be sure. "Claire, _please._ I know she's upset and I know she's hurting but she won't tell me why. Help me out."

There's a long pause before Claire speaks again and now she's whispering too.

"I can't, Jonathan. I promised, okay? She wants to talk to you, I swear she does, she's just scared—"

There's a _hey!_ in the background and then a loud bang as the phone falls to the floor. He jerks the receiver away from his ear and when he moves it back Nancy's already talking.

"…on to you, mister, stop trying to pump my roommate for information." She sounds annoyed.

"Well if you would just tell me—"

"There's nothing to tell!"

"Nancy, you're a terrible liar."

"I am an _excellent_ liar, thank you very much," she shoots back and she sounds so sad he can feel his heart breaking.

"Nancy, _please_. I love you."

There's a pause and then a sigh.

"I'm tired, Jonathan. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Nance—"

"Goodnight."

She doesn't wait for him to reply, just hangs up.

Jonathan stares at the phone for a long time after he replaces it on the cradle. He barely sleeps and when he does he dreams of her back, walking away.

+++

Nancy wakes up with a headache and a bad taste in her mouth and a weight on her chest.

She trashed the letter from Chicago, but the waitlist notification from Northwestern sits on her desk to taunt her. It's masochistic, she knows, but she can't help it.

Claire is sitting on her bed across the room, notebook open on her lap and rueful look on her face.

"You have to—"

"Don’t start," Nancy interrupts, rubbing her eyes. Her stomach churns and she wonders if she's going to throw up from the hangover or the emotional turmoil.

"Nancy, do you even remember what he sounded like last night?"

"Sort of," she shrugs. It hurts to think about Jonathan, which means she hurts all day, every day. She doesn't know what to tell him, doesn't know what to do. She checks her mailbox every day still, but she hasn't received anything else from Northwestern. She's living in limbo.

She's living in hell.

"He sounded like he was about to cry."

She sighs, throws her covers off her and lowers her feet to the floor. She slept fully clothed the night before; not surprising, considering how fuzzy her memories are.

"Don't be fooled by his sensitive guy act." It's a lie and it tastes bitter on her tongue. She's glad he can't see her right now.

"Bullshit, Nance," Claire says and she winces. "Isn't he supposed to be the person you turn to with stuff like this? The one you can trust, the one who can help you with shit? Stop hiding from him."

"And what?" she snaps. Her head feels like it's about to split in two. "What am I supposed to do, Claire? Just drop out of school? Give up, get a job as a secretary, marry him, pop out a couple babies, buy a house on a cul-de-sac? Abandon all my dreams?"

"No, but you've gotta do something other than _this_ ," Claire snaps back. "You're miserable here, that's pretty fucking obvious, and I don't know if anyone's ever told you this but when you're not happy you make _damn sure_ no one else is. We've got fourteen fucking feet in this room and it's like walking through the angriest, bitchiest sludge on earth. So do _something_ , Nancy, because you're ruining _my_ semester too."

Nancy's stomach rolls over and she can feel tears biting behind her eyes. She glares at Claire, grabs her towel and shower caddy, and stomps off down the hall.

She barely makes it through her first class, skips the rest. When she calls the Byers' Will picks up and informs her Jonathan's out on a job in town and that he should be back around dinnertime.

With time to kill, she goes to the dining hall and picks at a sandwich. Stops by the mail room and checks her mailbox; there's a campus magazine and nothing else. Forces herself to take a nap, but tosses and turns instead. Finally she walks halfway across campus to wander through the stacks of the library, keeping an eye on the fading daylight every time she passes a window. She carefully avoids the daily newspapers.

When she gets back to her dorm room Claire's not there and she's glad for it. Taking a deep breath she picks up her phone and dials Jonathan's number. He picks up on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi." She can't keep the sad out of her voice. She hasn't been able to for days; she knows that's part of why he's been so worried.

"Hey," he says softly. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit." As the words leave her mouth she makes a promise to herself: she's going to be honest. She's going to stop lying, right now.

"Yeah, you sounded…" He trails off and she holds her breath waiting for him to continue. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

She wishes he would have at least given her a few minutes of meaningless small talk to get her courage together, but none of her wishes seem to be coming true lately. She takes a deep breath.

"Chicago rejected me," she says. There's silence on his end for a long moment.

"Oh," he finally offers. "And Northwestern?"

"Waitlist."

"Ah. Nance, I'm sorry."

"Yeah."

She waits for him to speak again, lips pressed tightly together. A tear slips down her cheek, unbidden, and she impatiently brushes it away.

"So what are our options?" he finally asks.

For some reason the phrasing of the question – the casual tone, the 'our' in the middle of the sentence – sets off a spark of anger inside of her. It meets the sadness, the unmoored feeling in the pit of her stomach, and sets her emotions ablaze.

" _Our_ options?"

"Yeah," he sounds confused and taken aback by her tone. "What do we do now?"

"Well _you_ don't do anything. You sit in Hawkins and keep taking your photographs and building your little career and I figure out what the _fuck_ to do with my life."

"Hey, calm down." He tries to soothe her and it stokes the anger into something much closer to rage.

"Let me tell you what my options are, _Jonathan_ ," she bites out, stands from her bed and starts to pace the room. "I can stay in New York, at Columbia, muddle my way through while being miserable, get my Ivy League degree, and see what kind of mess I am at the end of it. Or I can drop out, come back to Hawkins, get married, pop out some kids, and get a fucking house at the end of the fucking cul-de-sac."

"That's not true—"

"You're right, my third option: I can drop out, move to Chicago with you, get a job as a secretary and see if we end up getting married or not. Maybe I'll meet someone new if we fall apart, or maybe I'll have your kids and stay at home and turn into my _fucking mother_."

"What the fuck, Nancy," he breathes, and the bewildered hurt in his voice is like a red-hot poker into her gut. She swallows against a wave of nausea. "This isn't my fault."

"No?" she asks incredulously. "How is this not your fault? The only reason I'm even out here is because _your_ dream was to go to NYU. I got into Northwestern last year, you know; I could have _just gone there_. Or I could have gone to Michigan or to Notre Dame or _anywhere else_ that was closer to Hawkins, but you kept your fucking mouth shut, you kept your fucking secrets until it was too fucking late! I was willing to do _anything_ for your dreams, Jonathan, but you don't give a _fuck_ about mine!"

"That's not true," he argues and he's louder now, matching her as their tempers rise. "That is _bullshit_ , Nancy Wheeler—"

"It is _not_ bullshit," she yells, her voice cracking. "We had a _plan_ —"

"No," he interrupts and it's almost a roar. "No, Nancy, _you_ had a plan! You had a million fucking plans, and you didn't tell me about _any_ of them. You didn't tell me you got into Columbia, you told me you were _going_ to Columbia. You never asked me if I was going to NYU, you just knew I got in. You never asked if I could afford it, you never asked if I could _handle_ it. You never even asked if I still had the same dreams I did before _—Before_. You just _assumed_. _You_ made a plan, you mapped out your pretty little life, and you just assumed I was willing to go along with it. And goddamn it, Nancy, I _was_ willing to go along with it because I love you _so fucking much_ , but I _can't_. I have to do things for me, too. I can't just do whatever you want."

"That's not—"

"It _is_. And you're doing it again _right now._ "

They're both breathing heavily and she's gripping her phone so hard she's afraid she's going to crack it. She can feel the tears streaming down her face and she wonders if he's crying too.

"So I'm selfish," she says, voice flat and dead. Her chest aches.

" _No_ , I'm saying there's two of us in _us_ and it can't just be what _you_ want all the time. We have to find some sort of compromise. A middle way."

"Would you move here?"

"I _can't_ ," he sounds so pained when he says it and she's sure he's crying as well now. "I would do _so much_ for you, but I can't do that."

Something inside her turns to ash.

"Coward." She hears his sharp intake of breath across the line. "You _fucking_ coward."

"Nancy—"

"You make this all sound so goddamn noble, but it's not, you're just fucking _scared_. You're not protecting your family, your brother, you're just a fucking _coward_ who's scared of finding out you've actually been full of shit this whole time! It runs in the fucking family, doesn't it? You feel like a big man back in Hawkins, important and going places, going to _Chicago_ , but the minute you have do something for _me_ you run away. All you're doing is running away you fucking _selfish coward_. Maybe not to booze and women, but you're still running, _just like your father."_

It's so quiet on the other end of the line she thinks, for a moment, he's already hung up. Her heart is pounding; she knew even as the words came out of her mouth how far over the line she's gone. But she is so hurt and so angry and so sad, and all she wants is for him to feel as hurt and angry and sad as she does. When he speaks she can hear it all in his voice and she knows she's succeeded.

"Fuck you, Nancy," he rasps out and there's a bang as he slams the phone down.

She doesn't hang up her receiver, just stares at it like it's somehow come alive, like it's responsible for what just happened. When the blaring off-the-hook tone starts, she gently puts it down.

Her limbs feel like spaghetti, her body somewhere between weightless and the heaviest it's ever felt. She sits on the edge of her bed and lowers her head into her hands.

"Fuck," she whispers. " _Fuck_."

+++ 

He doesn't realize he's thrown the phone across the room until it shatters against his David Bowie poster.

He is shaking from head to toe, and he feels like he wants to hit something. Or maybe shoot something. Definitely destroy something.

The rage and the hurt is so loud in his ears he misses the knock on his door the first time. When it comes again, he manages to answer in the affirmative. The door opens a crack and Will pokes his head in.

"Can I come in?"

Jonathan is still standing in the middle of the floor and trembling; all he can do is shrug. Will lets himself in and walks over to his brother, stands a careful couple of feet away.

"Are you alright?"

Jonathan's in too much pain to lie.

"No," he admits. "No, I am not alright."

Will's mouth quirks into a wry grin. "Yeah, that didn't sound alright."

It's the first time it's occurred to him that he was shouting, and that the walls in this house are pretty thin.

"Fuck. Is mom home?" 

"No. She's not back from work yet."

"Thank god."

"Yeah." Will gives him another considering look and then sits on the edge of his bed. Jonathan stays standing. He feels like he's going to jump out of his skin.

Will has always known that with time, Jonathan will talk. He lets the silence stretch until he can't take it anymore and the words come tumbling out.

"She said I was like Lonnie."

He feels Will's wince echoed back in the depths of his soul.

"That's fucked up," his brother says, shaking his head. "You are _not_ like Dad."

"I don't know." Jonathan suddenly feels deflated, boneless. He sits next to Will. "Maybe I am. Maybe I'm a coward too."

"You're _not_ ," Will insists. "That's a fucked up thing to say to you, and Nancy knows it's a fucked up thing to say to you. That's why she said it. She's trying to hurt you."

"Yeah, well, it worked."

"Why is she trying to hurt you?"

Will's voice is soft again, and something cracks in Jonathan's chest. They never used to hurt each other, not intentionally. Not until last year, not until he ruined her plans and broke her heart and she stayed with him anyway. He feels angry, he feels guilty, but most of all he feels sad. He's not sure if he'll feel anything else again.

"Because she's hurting, and I think I'm the one who hurt her," he says softly. "Because she's stuck at a school she hates because of me, and now she's waitlisted for Northwestern. You know Nancy; she's always got a plan."

"Plans always change," Will reasons. "I mean, how many of _our_ plans got ruined?"

He chuckles, a humorless and empty thing. "All of them."

"Exactly. She's just got to change her plan."

"Yeah. You tell Nancy Wheeler to change her plan and see how that goes."

Will chuckles, shakes his head.

"She's stubborn. Mike, too. I think it runs in the family. And she's _wrong_ about this. But she loves you, right? That's more important."

Jonathan shakes his head, puts his arm around his brother and draws him close. Maybe it was always meant to be just the three of them, maybe he was always meant to be alone. Maybe Nancy was an anomaly; maybe it was always going to end.

"I don't know, bud," he says and feels the emptiness inside grow and grow. "I don't know anymore."

+++

She dreads the flight home for spring break, but gets on the plane anyway. She hasn't showered, has barely been able to drag herself out of bed. She looks shitty enough that the woman sitting next to her spends the whole flight trying to offer her relationship advice as Nancy tries not to cry.

She hasn't spoken to him since their fight.

She tried calling his line a few times to no avail before giving up and calling the Byers home proper. Once again it was Will who answered, who told her Jonathan was hurting, that he had shattered his phone against his bedroom wall and hadn't replaced it yet. When she asked to talk to him he told her he was at work, and suggested waiting another couple days to call back.

She did, but he still wouldn't talk to her. His mother said he was at work then, too, but she could hear him in the background cooking dinner.

She doesn't understand how she can still hurt so much, still feel so angry, but want his comfort. She wants his arms wrapped around her and his voice assuring her it will all be okay, that they're in this together, even as she want to rage at him again, to accuse him of ruining their plan for his own ends.

Except he was right – it wasn't _their_ plan. It was hers. Aside from Chicago, she's never asked him what he wanted. And if he's tried to tell her, well, she hasn't been listening.

She just wants to sleep, maybe forever.

He was supposed to pick her up in Indianapolis, but she thinks he probably pawned the job off on her parents, or maybe Mike. Mike, who is 16 now and has his driver's license and everything. Mike, who she wouldn't trust to drive her home from the airport, except she's too sad and too tired to take the keys from him if he's waiting for her at the gate.

He's not, though. Jonathan is.

He looks a lot like she does, she thinks. His hair is greasy, and there are dark bags under his eyes. His clothes look rumpled, messy, like they've been on the floor or the laundry basket, or maybe he's just been sleeping in them. He's studying the scuffed up toes of his shoes as she deplanes, but looks up once she approaches him.

"Hi," she says softly. His eyes look so sad; she thinks hers do too. 

"Hi." He leans in, barely brushing a kiss across her cheek. It feels perfunctory. She wonders how many times her heart can break. It doesn't feel like there's a limit.

"You didn't have to pick me up," she offers as they start to walk towards baggage claim. Her fingers and arms itch to wrap around him, to pull him close, but his shoulders are hiked up around his ears and he won't look at her full on.

"Your parents had a thing, and Mike isn't allowed to drive this far yet. I wasn't going to strand you at the airport." His voice is carefully neutral and he keeps his eyes on the carpet or pointed straight ahead.

"Thanks," she whispers and swings her hand a little closer to his but he picks up his pace so he's walking just slightly in front of her.

The car ride back is painful. They don't speak, and no matter which mix tape he puts on it feels like it's trying to probe at the center of her soul. The tension is oppressive and she devotes all her focus to breathing evenly, as if this is a normal drive and not some sort of death march.

She thinks about the drive back from Chicago just a few months ago, how she spent it tucked into his side even though she couldn't wear a seatbelt, how she sang along to her favorite songs on the radio, how she traced maps and patterns on his thigh until he pulled off at a rest stop and laid her down in the backseat because he couldn't take her teasing anymore.

She feels like he is miles away and she doesn't know how to get back to him.

"Jonathan," she starts as they pass the Welcome to Hawkins sign, but he shakes his head, cutting her off.

"Nancy, don't," he interrupts. "Just don't."

She nods. _Do you still love me?_ she wants to ask. _I still love you. I'm sorry. I'm hurting, but I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

She bites her tongue and keeps it between her teeth until they pull up in front of her house.

She opens the passenger door but he doesn't move. She frowns.

"Aren't you coming?"

He lets out a big sigh and turns to look at her for the first time in almost an hour.

"Do you really think I should?"

She know he's right; her parents' station wagon is in the driveway and the lights are on inside, so as much as she'd like to drag him up to their room to sort this mess out, there's no way she's going to be able to. Instead they'll have to sit around the dinner table with her family and there is absolutely no way either of them can pretend they're fine.

"Yeah," he says bitterly, watching the realization play out over her face. "See you later, Nancy."

She tries to find hope in that short sentence as she pulls her suitcase out of his backseat. At least he thinks there's a later.

She watches him drive off before turning and trudging up the walkway to her house. The front door is unlocked but the foyer is oddly dark.

"Hello?" she calls out, trying to keep her voice light. "I'm home."

A hand emerges from the doorway to the living room and flicks the light on. Sitting on the front table is a large, thick folder, purple and white. She drops her suitcase, her fingers suddenly limp, as her parents, Mike, Holly and Eleven all pop out from their hiding places.

"Surprise!" they cry in unison. She can barely draw a breath.

"They sent it to your permanent address instead of your school one," Mike explains picking up the acceptance package from Northwestern and handing it to her. He looks so excited for her that it wrenches her heart. Her hands are shaking as she takes it from him. "We checked to make sure you wouldn't miss a deadline if we waited until you got home. You have until April 15 to accept."

She can't stop the tears from rolling down her face as her family takes turns hugging her, congratulating her. They think she's happy, overwhelmed with joy. It's only Eleven who whispers in her ear when they embrace.

"You're sad," she observes, just like she did almost a year ago. Nancy can't speak, can only nod and let the sobs loose. "It's going to be okay. Promise."

_Friends don't lie_ , she wants to reply. She's not sure anything will ever be okay again.

+++

She listens carefully for her parents to go to sleep. Then she waits another half an hour. She pulls her hair back into a short ponytail, and digs in the back of her closet until she finds the blue sweater with thin white strips from so many years ago. She pulls it on over her tank top and leggings, feeling it brush the tops of her thighs.

She's not sure if Jonathan ever figured out that she still had it; she hid it away in the year she was still dating Steve, afraid he'd find it and accuse her of more things. When she and Jonathan had finally gotten together she'd stolen enough of his other clothes that she'd been content to keep it tucked away; she had other sweaters and t-shirts that smelled like him. She's saved the blue sweater for when she's felt most vulnerable, most afraid. Just the feel of it, the scratchy wool, brings her back to the fall of 1983, the feeling of Jonathan's arms tight around her, his voice in her ear telling her _it's okay, I've got you_.

She lets the sleeves hang over her fingertips and wraps her arms tightly around her middle for a second before shaking her head and shoving her feet into her sneakers.

She sticks her head out into the hallway one more time, listening for movement, then scoops the Northwestern folder off her bedspread and carefully climbs out her window.

It's been a while since she's done this, but she's pretty sure she remembers how.

She makes, probably, a little too much noise on her way down to the front lawn but no one comes racing to her window so she thinks she's gotten away with it. Honestly, she probably could have left through the front door. And maybe she should have because she suddenly realizes she doesn't have her keys. Or her wallet. Or anything, except her transfer acceptance folder and a destination in mind.

It's late March and the night is chilly but it's not too bad and the Byers' house isn't too far and Hawkins is a joke of a small town with pretty much no crime, so she squares her shoulders and sets off walking.

The problem with walking is all she has for entertainment is her brain, and her brain is buzzing with regret and fear. It's not that she didn't mean _some_ of what she yelled at him, it's that the reason she was yelling in the first place was no longer true. She had gotten into Northwestern. She could, she _would_ , start her fall semester there. And she'd yelled the meanest things she could possibly think at him.

He never once doubted her and she took every fear, every insecurity, every bit of hurt out on him in return. And she did it because she was sure he'd just take it and still love her in the morning.

She feels like dirt. Like absolutely terrified dirt.

Her thoughts cycle through that same series over and over. Tears fill her eyes and eventually spill over. She keeps her stare on the road in front of her, dark and shadowed, and brushes the tears away when they fall. She lets herself get lost in thought.

She misses the headlights as they come up behind her. When the white sedan slows to a stop it nearly scares her half to death.

The passenger window is open and a familiar face is looking out at her, clearly confused.

"Nancy?"

He always shows up when she least expects it.

"Steve." She offers him a watery smile, hears him throw the car into park and then he's climbing out, rushing over to her.

"What the hell are you doing out here, it's the middle of the night!" he says, even as he pulls her into a hug. She keeps her arms crossed over her chest, holding the folder tight, but she leans into him with all her weight and presses her face into his chest. She always loved his hugs.

"What are _you_ doing out here," she mumbles into the fabric of his shirt. It's only when she pulls away that she realizes it's a police uniform.

"Patrolling," he answers, like it should be obvious.

"Hawkins? In the middle of the night?" In New York, sure, but here?

Steve gives her a _look_.

"Weird shit happens in this town. Hopper and I take turns, every other night. We're just keeping an eye on things."

Well, she can't fault their logic.

"I'm going to Jonathan's," she says softly, looking at the ground. She can practically feel his brow furrow further, even though she's not looking at him.

"He has a _car_ , Nancy, why didn't you ask him to pick you up?"

She searches for the words and can't seem to find them. He seems to notice the folder she's holding for the first time and shakes his head.

"How 'bout this," he says, opening the passenger door. "I'll give you a ride, you can tell me on the way."

He turns down the stereo – REO Speedwagon, she's pretty sure – and she tells him, haltingly and occasionally through tears, what happened. He takes the long way to Jonathan's, adding a few detours to give her more time and some space to cry.

"What could you say to him that's so unforgivable?" he finally asks as they draw inevitably nearer to the Byers' driveway. She lets out a sigh so deep she thinks it rattles her bones.

"I told him he's just like his father," she says softly, keeping her eyes on her lap, but raises them when she feels gaze boring into her. His jaw is slack, and he looks stunned.

"You know," he says after a minute, "when I told him he was like his father he beat my face in."

She shouldn't laugh but she can't help it; it comes out thin and sad. 

"Yeah," she says. "I remember. I was there."

"You did a stupid thing, Nance, but people are stupid. He's a smart guy; he'll forgive you."

"I don't know if I deserve it."

"Okay, now you're just throwing a pity party."

"I'm not. Jonathan and I haven't had the best year. I think more of it's been my fault than I realized."

"Yeah, but you two are ridiculously, obnoxiously, obviously in love with each other. I know you, Nance. You never go down without a fight."

He comes to a stop at the bottom of the Byers' driveway and she grins at him a little more fully.

"Thanks for the ride," she says and leans across the gearshift to hug him. It's awkward, but they make do.

"Anytime," he says. "Though next time, just call your boy, okay?"

"If he's still my boy."

"Pretty sure he is," Steve says and nods towards the windshield. Jonathan is standing on the porch, wearing sweatpants and no shirt, breathing hard. It's not until she climbs out of the car that she realizes the expression on his face is one of pure panic.

" _Jesus_ ," he hisses as she closes the door behind her, though he half slumps against the porch railing with relief. "Will is at Lucas's tonight. I saw the lights, and I thought…"

"No," she says and winces. "No, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I was walking over and Steve was patrolling and he offered me a ride—"

"Nancy, it's almost one on the morning. Why the hell were you walking over here?" His voice sounds flat, and emotionless. He glances down and sees the folder in her hand. "What's that?"

She takes a deep breath, screws up her courage, and forces herself to speak.

"Can we talk?"

+++

There's a weird buzzing in his head. It's been there ever since she sat on the edge of his bed and explained that she'd been accepted to transfer to Northwestern and that her acceptance package had been mailed to her parents' house and not her dorm.

"They wanted to surprise me." Her voice is fragile like rice paper. "That's why they didn't say anything."

She keeps talking after that but he's really not sure what she says. Her words from their fight have been swirling around in his head for days now, and they've gotten louder and louder with each passing minute since her revelation. Finally he holds up a hand for her to stop and she falls instantly silent.

"I am _not_ like my father," he says softly.

"No you're not," she whispers. "I know you're not."

"So why did you say it?"

"Because I wanted to hurt you." It sounds like the admission costs her. The small, vindictive thing inside him cheers; part of him wants his pound of flesh. "I just wanted you to be in as much pain as me."

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he sighs instead. Braces his elbows on his knees and drops his face into his hands. She is close and he can smell her, smell her shampoo and that scent that’s just her skin. He could reach out and draw her close and take comfort in her warmth and her embrace and he knows she would hold onto him as tight as she could. But inside he still aches and a part of him fears, as well; fears that she'll draw him near only to dig a knife into his back again.

He opts to stay still, for now.

"I'm sorry." He hears the tears in her voice. "I cannot possibly tell you how _sorry_ I am. I didn't mean it, I just lashed out, and I said the worst thing I could possibly think of. If I could take it back, I would. I would do _anything_ to take it back, but I can't. I can't…"

When he looks up her face is covered by her hands, but it's not her hands, not really, because they're covered with familiar blue sleeves. He blinks at her for a second, the thin white strips slowly cutting a path through the fog in his head. He looks at her, really properly looks at her, for the first time since she climbed out of Steve's police cruiser.

"Is—Is that my sweater?"

She looks confused for a moment. Then, to his surprise, she pulls his sleeves the rest of the way over her fingertips and wraps her arms around herself like she's trying to keep him from taking it away.

"Yes."

"From the—"

" _Yes_. It makes me feel… safe."

He's not sure why that renders him speechless, but it does. And as he looks at her she straightens, like she's finally figured out what she has to say.

"You're right."

It's not how he was expecting her to start.

"Huh?"

"You're right," she repeats. "I made a lot of plans. A _lot_. And I didn't make them _with_ you. But Jonathan, you are in _every one_ of my plans. From… From that first night in my room to right now, every single plan I have made has you in it. I don't have _any_ plans without you."

He opens his mouth to speak but she cuts him off.

"I don't want them to be _my_ plans anymore, ok? I want them to be our plans. I want to make them together. And I don't know why—I don't know why I have _such_ a hard time with that. I love you and I trust you more than _anyone_ and you know just about everything there is to know about me, but I _hate_ feeling weak around you. Feeling lost. I feel like I should know where I'm going, what I'm doing, because you always seem to. And that's not, I'm not, I'm not saying that's _bad_. I just want to be… _enough_. I've never felt like I'm enough."

"For me?"

"For anyone." She gives him a shy smile and it's like he's in his high school dark room and it's three years ago and she's asking him _So what was I saying? When you took my picture?_ "You don't get straight A's and maintain a perfect attendance record because you feel secure in yourself. I never really thought about what to do _after_ that, you know?"

For an endless moment they are both silent.

"I've been… lost," she finally says. "And scared. And… _weird_. "

"Unhappy," he offers. She sighs.

"Yeah. And you… you've been flourishing. You've got your dream job, you're getting gigs in other cities, you're published in big papers. And I can't even figure out a major."

"I'm not—" He cuts himself off and sighs as well. "I'm _bored_ , Nancy. I'm bored and I feel trapped and I feel lost, too, because I can't figure out how to get myself out of this house but I also am going _crazy_ staying here. And on top of that, nothing feels right without you, okay? I miss you, all the time, and I don't know what to do about it. I forgot how to do this on my own. You _made_ me forget."

"I don't want you to do it on your own."

"But all we've done for a year now is hurt each other. Both of us; we keep secrets, we make shitty decisions, we get angry, we get sad. I know I started it, kind of, but it's both of us. And I don't want that either. I want to go back to being happy."

"I do too!"

"But _how_ , Nancy? _How_ do we do that?"

It's hard to draw full breaths but he forces himself to, to keep from getting dizzy. He feels as if he is teetering on the edge of a very high cliff and he's not sure if the wind will save him or blow him right off the edge.

Nancy is looking at him steadily and her eyes are a deep oceanic blue and even though he still feels raw and tender, he is also still utterly in love with her.

"Okay." She takes a deep breath. "Okay, this is what we do. First of all, I forgive you. All of it, from last year until now. I said it last year and I think I meant it at the time, but I don't think I meant it fully. I've been blaming you for how I feel, and that's not fair because you were right, I made these choices for _my_ plan, not _our_ plan. So I forgive you and it is _all_ in the past, okay?"

"Okay." He's not sure what she's getting at, but he wants to hope.

"And I promise that I won't hide anymore. When I'm sad I'm going to tell you I'm sad, and when I’m mad I'm going to get mad, and when I make plans I make them _with you_. I promise I'm not going to lie to you, even if it upsets you, because you are the _most_ important person in my life and I don't know how to do _any_ of this without you. I _promise_ , Jonathan, I will do my very best, as long as you call me on my bullshit. I promise if you agree to give this another shot, I'll give it my all."

Her gaze is steady. He stays quiet, watching her.

"And you? Can you promise that too?"

She looks like she's ready to fight a monster. Something warm spreads through his gut and loosens in his chest. It's a simple choice; either way he's going to keep living his life. The question is whether or not he keeps living it with Nancy.

And it's never been a choice, not really. Not since he was 16 and she looked so shy in the hallway of a funeral home, but still so determined.

"Yeah, okay. Okay." He sits up a little straighter, turns to her fully. "I forgive you, too, and I promise. All of it, I promise."

She considers him for a few seconds while his heart pounds. Then, to his complete surprise, she pushes her right hand out of the sweater sleeve, spits in it, and holds it out to him.

"Spit swear."

"What?"

"Spit swear." She jiggles her hand a little bit, beckoning. He searches her face for a hint of a smile, a glimmer of humor, but she's entirely serious.

So he spits in his palm, grabs her hand, and pulls her forward.

She's got her other arm around his neck almost before his lips crash into hers, and her mouth opens so easily at the first touch of his tongue that he knows she was hoping for this. And it feels good, it feels so good, to taste her again, to feel her mouth against his, but his chest still aches and his head is pounding from sadness and lack of sleep, so he indulges only for a moment before carefully pulling back again.

"Okay," he nods and her breath is hot on his cheek. "Spit swear."

She smiles.

All at once the exhaustion overwhelms him. He carefully untangles himself from her, listens for any sign his mother has woken up. When he's confident the house is quiet he tosses her Northwestern folder onto his desk and starts to pull down the comforter except she's still sitting on it. She's sitting on it and looking at him like he's something very precious that also might bite.

"It's now almost two in the morning," he gestures for her to move out of the way. She stands warily. "We should get some sleep."

"We?"

He keeps the t-shirt he pulled on before they started talking and sheds his sweatpants to sleep in his boxers. He climbs into his side and leaves hers conspicuously open. Slowly she toes off her sneakers and pushes down her leggings, stepping out of them as she climbs in beside him.

He reaches over and switches off his bedside lamp, then returns to his back. Automatically his arm lifts, makes space for her. He watches her watching him in the dim moonlight, until she moves and rests her head on his chest. Her arm slides across his waist and her hand grips his side tight.

Something slides back into place and they take a deep breath in unison.

In the quiet dark he can barely keep his eyes open. He thinks he hears her whisper goodnight just before they shut.

+++

When he wakes up his head is pounding and his mouth feels like it's filled with dry cotton and he's alone in bed.

His eyes feel swollen as he blinks them open, rubs them until the world comes back into focus. The other side of his bed is messy but Nancy's not there anymore. His door is ajar, and the house beyond is quiet.

He doesn't bother to pull his sweatpants back on, feeling a little overheated, just shuffles out into the hallway and to the bathroom. He pees, downs a couple paper cups of water and an aspirin, and brushes his teeth with eyes still half-shut, running a hand through his hair to make it do anything other than stand straight up. It only kind of works.

He can see the creases in his cheek from his pillow and wonders what time it is. He feels groggy, like he's slept far too much. He wonders if Nancy snuck out in the early hours of the morning.

When he turns the corner for the kitchen he finds he's wrong; she's sitting at his kitchen table with the purple folder open and its contents spread out in front of her. She's carefully filling out a form but looks up when she hears him enter.

"Hey. You're up." Her smile is small, but it's there.

"What time is it?" He pulls a mug out of the cupboard and pours the last of the coffee in the pot into it. It's steaming and a little thick, like it's been sitting on the warmer for a while, reducing. "Where is everyone?"

"Your mom's at work, Will called to say he's going to a movie with Mike and El, and, um, almost 11:30."

"Really?" He hasn't slept this late in a long time.

She gives him a slightly bigger grin. "I tried to wake you up. I believe your exact words were, 'Fuck right off, Nance, I'm sleeping.' I could be wrong, though, you said them mostly into my left boob."

He chokes a little on his coffee. It burns his throat but he ignores it and sits down next to her at the table.

"What's all this?"

"Oh you know, paperwork. Yes, I accept your admission. Here are the classes I'd like to take. No, I don't need on-campus housing." She pauses, presses her lips together, looks up at him through her eyelashes. "I don't, right?"

There's still a dull ache inside of him, the feeling of wounds healing. It's uncomfortable, but it's not the raw pain of even the night before.

"Right," he agrees and smiles. She cups his cheek for a moment then drops her hand, returns to the form. He watches her sign and date the bottom.

"I've been looking at neighborhoods." She's looking at the campus map among her papers but he wonders if she can feel his eyes tracing her profile. "Northwestern is in Evanston, which is north. As long as we're near the Purple Line I can get to campus, so we could live pretty much anywhere on the North Side. Lakeview, like Ben and Michelle, or maybe Uptown? I don't really know what's in Uptown, I just know it's north of Lakeview."

"What about Lincoln Park?" He rises and crosses to the fridge to pull out eggs. He's hungry. "I heard there's some cool stuff there, Ben says there's tons of little clubs with live music. I'm pretty sure that's where that blues bar my mom was talking about is, too. It's one stop down."

"South of Lakeview?"

"Yeah, just under it. There's a college there too, I think, so we'd fit in." He sets the eggs on the counter, contemplates getting a bowl. "You hungry? I'm gonna make eggs. You want scrambled or over—"

He's cut off when she slips in between him and the counter and pulls his face down to hers. She tastes like toothpaste and coffee and his arms wrap around her waist before he can think.

Something else inside him slides back into place as her mouth opens for him, like a puzzle almost complete. Her hands are splayed across his cheeks, and her touch is as gentle as he's ever felt. For a long, weightless moment there is no urgency in their kiss, just pure indulgence. They relearn the contours of their mouths, the way their sighs taste. He feels as if he could do this forever, stay right here in the moment for the rest of time. And then it changes, deepens as a wave of desire crashes over him. A shudder runs the entire length of his spine as he _wants_.

He shifts them to the other side of the sink and lifts her onto the kitchen counter.

There's no finesse to this, no soft words or touches. It's all raw need, desperate and still tender from the week before. Their teeth click together and she tugs on his hair. He manages to get her leggings and underwear off, throws them somewhere behind him as she pushes his boxers down to his knees and wraps her legs around his waist. He keeps his mouth on hers, kissing and biting and breathing against her as they move. He thinks he feels wetness on his cheeks but he doesn't want to pull back enough to see which one of them might be crying.

She's the one to separate their mouths, ripping hers away with a gasp as she clenches around him, and panting in his ear, _Jonathan, Jonathan, I love you, I love you, I love you._

He says it back, and her name, teeth on the juncture of her neck and shoulder, fingers digging into her hips as he lets himself go.

She's got her limbs wrapped completely around him, holding him as close as she can, when he comes back to himself. She looks like she wants to say something incredibly important and sincere; he feels the echo of it inside him. Instead, he kisses her again, relishing how swollen her mouth is, until he suddenly remembers where they are.

"Oh my god." His eyes are frantic as he looks at her. "My mom can _never_ find out we did this."

That sets her laughing, her forehead resting on his shoulder for a brief moment before she loosens her legs and pushes him back and hops off the counter to scurry to the bathroom and clean herself up. He pulls up his boxers, grabs the spray bottle of all-purpose cleaner from under the sink and immediately wipes down the laminate. He shoves the bottle back before Nancy can catch him and tries to ignore the way his knees are shaking.

He leaves the eggs on the counter and sits back down at the table, focusing on his coffee as Nancy returns to the room. He watches her search for her bottoms until she lifts them, triumphantly, from the hallway entrance and pulls them back on.

He expects her to return to her chair but she settles herself in his lap instead, kisses his cheek and rests her forehead on his temple.

He holds the hem of his sweater between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the scratchy wool against the softness of her hip.

"Am I ever gonna get this back?"

"Nope."

"What about—hey, wait, do you have my Clash t-shirt? The green one? I can't find it _anywhere_."

"Um." She's blushing a little bit when he shifts to look at her. "Maybe."

"I want it back," he huffs. "You always steal my favorite shirts."

"They smell like you."

"Yeah, because I _wear them_."

She nuzzles her nose against his cheek, pressing a line of kisses down his sideburn. He tightens his grip a little bit, letting her soothe him. They're still healing, but he prefers this warmth to the coldness of the last week any day.

"It'll be easier when we're sharing a dresser," she notes and his heart jumps a little in his chest.

"Yeah," he agrees. "It will."


	6. 6. all I needed for another day, and all I ever knew – only you

"Is that the last box?"

It is not, but he's too out of breath to say so. He sets it down and braces his hands on his knees, catching his breath. For a moment he reconsiders their decision to rent on the second floor.

Then he turns around walks back down the stairs, out the door, and takes the final box out of the moving van. Tries to distract himself from the burning in his arms on his way back up the stairs by thinking of how he's going to have to return the rental but it doesn't exactly help.

"Jonathan?" Nancy's voice echoes out into the hallway as he walks in their new front door. It's still open, revealing a delightfully spacious living room with tall ceilings and a huge front window with leaded glass at the top. It has his stereo equipment and one worn loveseat Nancy's parents were glad to get rid of, and it is positively _filled_ with boxes.

"How the hell do we have this much stuff?" he says, setting the final box down on top of the one he'd just brought up and kicking the door shut behind him. Then he flops onto his back on the floor, limbs akimbo.

He hears Nancy's footsteps before she comes into view above him.

"You're so dramatic," she laughs.

"I'm not dramatic. Next time you get to unload all the boxes and carry them up the stairs." He pauses, considering. "I think I might hate our stairs."

She laughs again and disappears from view. He should get up, he should start unpacking, he should return the moving truck to U-Haul, but his limbs really do feel like jelly and he thinks he's _earned_ this.

Nancy reappears, a glass of water in hand. He could kiss her. He would, if he could get himself to move.

"Here," she says and sits on the floor beside him. He manages to get himself up on one elbow and drain the glass in a long gulp before handing it back to her and flopping onto his back once more. He stares at the ceiling and feels her straddle him. He tips his chin down, spreads his hands over her thighs. She's wearing shorts and her skin is smooth.

"Thanks for unloading most of the truck," she says. He gives her thighs a squeeze. "I'm gonna unpack the kitchen first, I think. Wanna talk about where it all should go?"

"I should return the truck," he sighs. "You put everything away, and I'll reorganize it later so it makes sense."

"Hey!"

He just grins at her. She gives a little huff and climbs off him, offering her hands. He lets her pull him to his feet, yanks her to him when he's standing again. Her arms come around his waist easily, holding tight, and he hugs her close for a long moment.

"Which box has the bathroom stuff?" he asks into her hair.

"The one labeled 'bathroom.'"

"You're _such_ a help." He lets her go, rolls his eyes, and grabs his keys from the small folding table his mom had given them. "Can you find the aspirin? Everything hurts already."

She nods and kisses his cheek before he goes.

The U-Haul rental place is only a few blocks away and he walks back in the summer sunshine, staring at the unfamiliar surroundings. The half-house, half-apartment buildings – two-flats and three-flats, Ben said they're called, explaining the lay of the land on one of their trips to the city – are crowded together with slender alleys between them, small yards in front and sometimes slightly bigger yards in back. He can hear the traffic from the two large streets that bookend their neighborhood, and watches the occasional car pass him on the narrower side street. A block away a group of kids are kicking a ball around in the middle of the street and their shouts echo off the buildings around them.

It hasn't fully sunk in yet. He's not sure when it will; maybe that night, when he climbs into the new bed Nancy's parents had insisted on buying them, or maybe the next morning when he wakes up and cooks breakfast in a new kitchen, his kitchen. _Their_ kitchen.

He gets lost in thought and passes his new front door by completely; it's only when he passes his car, carefully parallel parked by Nancy half a block away, and she swore up and down she hadn't even come _close_ to tapping a bumper, that he realizes he's walked too far. He tamps down embarrassment as he turns on his heel and backtracks.

The apartment is so quiet when he lets himself back in. He can hear Nancy humming to herself in the kitchen, the bumps, clangs and rustles of removing plates, pots and pans from newspaper and putting them into cabinets, but the silence makes him uncomfortable. He crosses the living room to where his stereo equipment is piled up and starts to assemble it.

"Your aspirin's on the counter!" Nancy calls. "What are you doing?"

"We need music."

"Oh my god," she laughs. "You and your priorities."

"It's too quiet!"

"It's too hot," she counters and he can hear her opening the kitchen windows.

She's not wrong. The air is thick and still inside their apartment and he feels sweat trickle down his spine beneath his shirt.

The stereo doesn't take him long. He's had it in his room since he was eleven, has taken it apart and put it back together just for fun almost more times than he can count. He pulls the cart over to the nearest electrical outlet and starts to stack the elements: speakers on the top shelf, turntable between them. Receiver on the shelf below, tape deck on top of that. The crates of records will sit next to the cart, the boxes of tapes on the bottom shelf.

He huddles there attaching wires as Nancy starts opening windows in the living room. There's a breeze, but the air is still hot and he's not sure how much this is going to help. Especially as the sun shifts slowly in the sky and begins to shine directly through that huge window. They need curtains.

He hears Nancy's soft footsteps as she come to stand behind him, rests hers hands on his shoulders. He keeps working, enjoying the feel of her shins at his lower back. When he's done, he lets out a triumphant grunt and stands, stepping back into her arms. She winds them tight around his waist and rests her cheek on his back.

"Wanna pick the record?" he asks. Feels her shake her head.

"You should do the honors."

He looks down at his records – _their_ records, combined and intermingled in two plastic crates – and considers. Nancy lets him go, steps away, and he hears her using her keys to cut through the tape on a box to his right.

His fingers are nimble as he flips through the sleeves, finds what he wants, slides it onto the turntable, drops the needle. It feels as natural as it ever did in his room.

He turns to Nancy, who is digging through the newly-opened box, as the opening piano chords start. Speckles float in the air, illuminated by the sun; dust and pollen and other small particles, creating something like a halo around her. He wishes he had his camera, but it's in one of the boxes in his bedroom. _Their_ bedroom.

She looks up, grins at him with her tongue between her teeth as she recognizes the song.

"Of course," she laughs as David Bowie starts to sing.

"Hey, it's good luck." He joins her by the box, looks down. It's his books. "We need bookshelves."

"We need _everything_ ," she notes. "Help me find the coffee table box, I think it has my notepads. I'm gonna make a list."

"Make sure you put a coffee table on the list, too."

For a moment he doesn't move, watches Nancy's legs flex as she navigates their new living room, rifles through their belongings.

Theirs, theirs, theirs.

David Bowie sings about ripples in a stream of warm impermanence and she looks at him over her shoulder.

"You gonna help me or you just gonna keep staring at my ass?" She wiggles it at him to make a point.

He shakes his head to break his reverie and gives the ass in question a little swat as he joins her.

+++

They work side by side for hours. When they've opened and unpacked enough boxes that she feels like her back is about to break, Nancy steps away to deal with practicalities while Jonathan rearranges their new kitchen and carefully stacks his books in the corner of the living room.

She calls her parents, confirming the phone number they gave them, circling the day of their impending visit on the calendar she's hung next to the telephone. She agrees, over and over, to the small things around the house her mother is now insisting they _need_ in their apartment. Any attempt to say no is met with an exasperated lecture about how she's never lived on her own before.

(She doesn't mention the year at Columbia. A dorm room with a roommate and a meal plan doesn't count, and she knows better than to try.)

She calls the Byers next, pulls Jonathan away from the posters he's carefully placing in frames they found at a yard sale to talk to his mother, his brother, to mark down their visit as well.

His tenor echoes through the apartment, bouncing off undecorated walls and open boxes. It is warm and affectionate, mixing with music still playing softly in the living room, and she lets it comfort her as she tries to organize her school papers, pens and notebooks on the childhood desk she took with her from her bedroom.

It seems out of place in the small side room they're hoping to repurpose into a guest bedroom. The floors are rich hardwood, the walls freshly painted white, and the window frame matches the floor. Her pastel-and-white desk and matching chair are both talismans of home and seemingly relics from another world, another time. A metaphor made real, she thinks, for this moment in her life.

She's got transfer student orientation in a couple days and then just one day of peace before their families invade, back to back. There's even a day of overlap. And then a mere two weeks before school starts.

If she thinks about it too much it'll overwhelm her, so she adds "more sheets" to the ever-growing list of things they need and walks away from it.

He's in their bedroom, carefully unpacking their suitcases and hanging up their clothes. He's got the closet neatly split into his-and-hers side and she looks at her dresses hanging next to his handful of button down shirts and two suit jackets and wonders if this would be a good time to take his pants off.

He seems to feel her stare, and turns.

"What?" he asks, something warm behind his eyes that she can feel in hers as well, but before she can reply the phone rings. She scurries off to answer it as he calls after her, "Bedroom phone! Put it on the list!"

It's Michelle, cooing with glee that they've made it, that their phone number works, and can't they take them out to dinner to celebrate? Ben should be done with work around seven, they need to get used to the L, let them show them around their new neighborhood. They're in Uptown, a few blocks north of Lakeview. It means she has to transfer trains at the end of the line to get to school, but keeps them near the only friends they have and the music clubs Jonathan's already so obsessed with.

He wanders up while they're talking, wraps his arms around her waist and rests his head on her shoulder, listening to Michelle's voice, distant and tinny.

"What do you think?" she asks him. "Dinner?"

"Tomorrow?" He puts his chin on her shoulder, widens his eyes in an appeal. "We need to go grocery shopping, and I'd like to go tonight."

"You're not cooking tonight. Let them buy us dinner."

"Yeah but I will be tomorrow. We need food."

"We can go in the morning."

"Or we can sleep in and not get dressed all day and get away with it because we've already bought our groceries."

"What about the rest of the list? And the rest of our unpacking?"

"One thing at a time."

"But—" She wants to say more but Michelle is laughing in her ear and Jonathan has started kissing her jaw – to distract or convince her she's not sure – and she gives up with a sigh and makes plans with the older woman for the next night.

Jonathan has moved on to sucking on the sensitive spot near her pulse point by the time she hangs up.

"That's very distracting," she admonishes. He ignores her, nips at her chin.

"What side of the dresser do you want?"

"Doesn't matter," she turns, presses her lips against his. He hauls her against him and the squeeze of his arms steals her breath. He spends a long moment plundering her mouth and she lets herself go to jelly in his grasp. She slides her hands from his chest to his cheeks and feels the dust and grit mixed with sweat on his skin. Is glad she already unpacked their bathroom box.

"Take a shower," she murmurs. "You're all dusty. I'll finish putting away our clothes."

"You're dusty too," he retorts. "Join me."

"When I'm done."

He kisses her again, and oh, he is so very tempting. She slides her hands from his neck to under his shirt, tugs it up and off in the kitchen just because she can. They have to break apart for her to do so and when he pulls her back against him she can feel the muscles in his shoulders flex.

"Nancy," he murmurs, moving his mouth to her neck and for a dizzying moment she thinks she's going to fuck him right there on the kitchen floor until she runs her hand through his hair and comes away with something soft and foreign. She raises her hand and her eyes and laughs when she sees the dust bunny dangling off her fingers.

"What?" he says, looking up and his eyes are so dark, so wanting she almost doesn't say, almost returns to her kitchen floor plan, but she'd really rather not get any more dirty than they already are. So she moves her hand, shows him what she found.

"Go take a shower," she says, pushing him gently away. He whines as he goes, and she listens for the shower to turn on before she leaves the kitchen.

She unpacks their clothes as fast as she can while still keeping them folded, organized, but he's wrapping a towel around his waist when she finally slips into the bathroom. He gives her a rueful shrug, a peck on the cheek as she strips off her dirty clothes and steps into the shower.

It's surreal, as she ducks under the spray. His two-in-one shampoo-conditioner is in one corner, her two bottles in the opposite corner. Her razor is next to a bar of soap in the soap dish. She saw his on the counter by the sink, next to their toothbrushes in a stand.

She wonders when this is going to get less weird. What will have to happen before she looks around this apartment and isn't amazed that she and Jonathan actually moved in together.

As she washes the grit and sweat of moving off her she's is transported back years, to a very different shower, a very different feeling, a very different kind of surrealism. And yet, somehow, to the same person – a boy then, a man now – waiting for her in her bedroom. She knew, at the time, something was beginning. She had no idea just what it was, what it would become.

That first night she invited him into her bed for protection, over the covers and clutching a gun. How things have changed.

She finishes washing quickly, eager to get back into his arms.

He's on top of the covers once more, towel still around his hips, his eyes closed and his jaw slack. Nancy smiles down at him from the edge of the bed, watching his chest rise and fall steadily.

She can't blame him. Moving is hard. She eyes the dusting of hair above the edge of the towel, follows its path to just below his navel, and considers waking him up with her mouth. A yawn interrupts her own fantasies and she lets it go, for now.

The air in the room is warm and the water evaporating from her skin cools her as she climbs in next to him, towel still wrapped around her as she shifts and snuggles against his side. Even in sleep he accommodates her, shifts to give her a place in his arms and curls against her back. She closes her eyes and counts his puffs of breath against the back of her shoulder as she falls asleep.

When she wakes it's to the sudden awareness that there is no body heat at her back, that a different record is playing, that someone is opening and closing the drawers of her dresser.

No, wait. Their dresser. Jonathan is opening and closing the drawers of _their_ dresser.

She pushes herself to a sitting position with one hand, tries to run her fingers through her hair and feels how strangely it dried. The room is dimmer, the sun is setting, and she wonders what time it is.

Jonathan has his back to her, wearing jeans and no shirt, and she watches his muscles move, follows the freckles and moles down from his shoulders to his hips and back up again before she can find her voice.

"What are you doing?"

He doesn't turn as he answers, keeps digging through her side of the dresser.

"Taking my shirts back."

"They're not _your_ shirts."

"Yes, they _are_ ," he laughs and turns. He's got the Clash shirt she sleeps in most often in one hand and she pouts. His smirk stays in place as he slips it over his head and oh, she's forgotten how good he looks in it.

His smirk deepens like he knows exactly what she's thinking. It must show on her face.

"Ready to go grocery shopping?"

 _No_ , she thinks. _I'd rather climb you like a tree_.

"Fine," she says aloud and lets the towel fall from her as she climbs off the bed. She stretches as she walks over to the dresser, feeling his gaze follow her across the room. She glances over her shoulder as she pulls on underpants and slips a sundress over her head and sees him rooted to the spot, hands in loose fists by his side. His fingers twitch, like he's keeping himself from reaching out for her.

She wonders what he's waiting for, because it sure seems like he's waiting for something.

"What?" she finally asks, scraping her hair back into a ponytail as she turns to him. His gaze is intense, searching. He clears his throat before he speaks.

"Nothing." He runs a hand through his hair and she watches it flop back into his eyes, thinks about fisting her hands in it as his mouth explores her body. She wonders what _she's_ waiting for. "C'mon, we've gotta make a shopping list."

She sighs, indulging for a moment in the thrum of desire in her blood, before following him back out to the living room.

+++

He watches her maneuver the aisles of the supermarket like she's going to disappear.

When he woke from his unintentional nap she was nestled into his side, one hand on his stomach and hair in his face. In the twilight between sleep and waking he had listened desperately for the sounds of his mother, her mother, their siblings, Hawkins. It was angry honking from the street that reminded him he was in Chicago now, that he was in his own apartment. The ache in his muscles, in his low back, reminded him what he had been doing all day.

Nancy had barely stirred. Just pressed her face further into the crook of his neck and sighed in her sleep. He wondered what kinds of sounds she had gotten used to in her year of New York; he remembered the middle-of-the-night phone calls when sirens and car backfire would mix with her nightmares and send her careening out of sleep. He wondered if she will sleep better here, and if he will be the one waking to the sounds of an unfamiliar city mixed with memories of a monster speaking with his brother's voice, of pulling her out of another dimension.

His life has been consumed with the practicalities of adulthood but for a moment he was suddenly aware of the existential possibilities, of the step they had taken together, of all the ways it could go wrong, all the ways it could go right.

He hopes it goes right.

But now they're in the condiments aisle and Nancy is holding two kinds of peanut butter and looking at him like he's crazy.

"What is with you?" she asks. "You're spacey."

"I'm just tired," he lies and looks at the jars in her hands. Points on the one he likes more, which just so happens to cost less. He does a mental calculation and winces at how much their total already is. Spending this much money all at once is gonna hurt.

She gives him a look, returns the other jar to the shelf but doesn't say anything, just tosses him his choice to add to their cart. He drops it on top of bags of flour and sugar.

"What's left?" she asks.

"Um," he consults the list, "Eggs. Milk. Cheese."

"I'm starving," she says, pushing the cart towards the dairy section. "We should have let Michelle and Ben buy us dinner."

"We can have sandwiches tonight, they're taking us out tomorrow."

"I don't want a sandwich. I want…" she trails off, her eyes going hazy as she thinks about food. He drops a kiss on the top of her head as he stops the cart and chooses a gallon of milk.

"We still have that whole other list of stuff to buy at home," he reminds her. "I'll make sandwiches tonight."

"Fine _mom_ ," she whines and grabs a dozen eggs and, as if just remembering, a few sticks of butter as well.

It is an ordinary, meaningless action and for reasons he doesn't understand his heart clenches in his chest. When she steps up to the cart with a package of Kraft singles and a block of cheddar cheese he grabs her wrist and pulls her to him. Her shock is plain on her face and the cheese is cold through his thin t-shirt as he dips his head down and kisses her hard.

It's short – they're both aware they're in a grocery store, that there are people around – and when he lets her go she looks almost concerned. She opens her mouth to ask him something, probably along the lines of 'No, seriously, what is up with you,' but he grabs the cart and pushes it forward and she follows, swallowing whatever she had to say.

He winces at the cash register, tries not to look at the growing total, and she squeezes his hand before pulling out a wad of cash like it's nothing at all.

At home he unloads groceries, arranging their refrigerator and pantry as she crouches by his stereo and carefully selects a tape. He can't help but grin when it comes on and she turns the volume up; it's one of the tapes he made her when she left for New York.

"Sounds better here," she says, joining him at the counter and starting to arrange spices in the cabinet to the left of the stove, bumping her shoulder against his. He leans against her for a moment then retrieves two plates and a knife and gets to work making sandwiches.

It's just soft white bread, crunchy peanut butter and grape jelly, but he makes them both double-decker PB&Js and delights in her smile when he cuts hers into triangles and hands it over to her. Laughs when she shoves as much as she can into her mouth all at once.

They don't have anything that passes for a kitchen table, not yet, so he chooses the counter next to the sink on the opposite side of the kitchen to eat at and watches Nancy alternate huge bites of sandwich with putting away the absurd amount of pasta and rice they got, pausing only to flip the tape when Side A ends.

"That was good, thank you," she says through her final bite, her cheeks ballooned like a squirrel's, and he laughs.

"Charming. Hold on."

He scurries out of the kitchen and into the living room where a duffel bag full of old towels his mom had passed on to them is sitting half-open. He digs through and finds the cool, smooth, hard object he'd felt in there earlier. Pulls it out, eyes it with a grin.

When his mom had told him to be careful with the bag he'd thought she was just being weird, but when he found the bottle of wine smuggled inside it'd made a little more sense.

"Where'd you get that?" Nancy says from right behind him and it startles him just a little.

"Mom put it in there," he says and digs around in the towels again. Sure enough there's a corkscrew and a folded piece of paper. Nancy stands close to his side, reading over his elbow as he opens it.

 _We love you both so much and we're so proud of you. Cheers to your new home. Don't tell the Wheelers_. _Love, Mom and Will_.

They both crack up at the same time. He relishes the feeling of Nancy's forehead against his bicep, her breath stuttering along his arm a she giggles, the way she grasps at his hips as she leans against him.

"Open that," she says, moving away to retrieve a couple juice glasses. He works the cork out of the bottle as she returns, pours for them.

The clink their glasses together as they settle on the loveseat; he places the note and corkscrew on the box nearest them, the bottle on the floor next to it. The loveseat is small so she curls up close to him and as they each take a long sip he wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her even closer.

They hadn't bothered to turn on the lights in the living room when they'd gotten back from the store; the sky was still twilight, the room a stunning pink-orange. Now it is pleasantly dark with only the dim light filtering in from the kitchen behind them and the moon outside creating a low glow. He runs his fingertips over her exposed shoulder, rests his cheek on the top of her head, and looks out the massive window, taking in the city beyond.

Through the branches and leaves and above the tops of the buildings he sees the moon, the stars, the glow of the city. The Talking Heads is playing, a soft and romantic tune, and he grins; this side of the tape is all love songs.

For a long time they sit in silence, drinking their wine and simply being next to each other.

"This is what I wanted," he finally says, voice soft in the dark. "I wanted to spend tonight with you. That's why I didn't want to go to dinner. I mean, I wanted to go grocery shopping too, but it's—it's our first night, right? First night in our new apartment, in our new city, in our new life. I want it to be just you and me."

The warmth from the wine started in his stomach, spread out through his veins and into his heart, his brain. Nancy is looking up at him, face so open, so unguarded. He can see love shimmering in her eyes and more – things he thinks he can name like hope and things that he can't, but that feel heavy and light at the same time. He just barely remembers to put his glass down on the floor before he kisses her.

She tastes like grape jelly and wine and her, that singular flavor he's craved since the first time he ever tasted it, and he has no idea where her glass has gone to but her hands are fisted in his hair and she's climbing into his lap. Their kisses have no grace, no finesse, just the desperate press of mouth on mouth, teeth scraping against sensitive, swollen lips, tongues licking and tasting and battling for dominance. He shifts so he can get his hands under her skirt, can take hold of her ass and pull her tight against him, against the growing bulge in his jeans, create the friction that makes him hiss a curse word into her mouth.

He has something he wants to ask her, but she is heat and sweat and Nancy, and he can't break away. He has never been able to say no to her, not really, not ever. They tip and shift until his legs are stretched out on the cushions and his back is against the arm of the loveseat and his hips are trapped between her legs, his favorite trap, his favorite inescapable place.

She moans, rolling her hips against his, and he almost shushes her before he remembers they don't need to be quiet in their own home, there's no one to catch them, no one to stop them. He groans in return, bucks against her as she pulls his shirt off, tosses it across the room. He feels her scrabbling at the button on his jeans as he pushes her panties aside, slides two fingers into her. His eyes cross for a moment when he feels how slick she is already.

It takes some insistence on her part to get him to pay attention to more than the taste of the sweat on her neck and the rhythm of his fingers inside her, to get him to lift his hips as she tugs his jeans and boxers down, stroking him as she does.

He hisses at her touch, the heat of her hand, and whines when she suddenly climbs off him, off the couch entirely. He's about to complain but she pulls her dress over her head, steps out of her underwear, and he forgets what words are entirely.

For a moment they regard each other in the darkness and he feels vulnerable, exposed, his chest heaving and his hardness against his belly and his jeans around his knees, but before he can think to be embarrassed she climbs on top of him again, sinks onto him, and he forgets anything exists except for her and the heat of her body and the touch of her lips against his.

"Fuck," he groans into her mouth as she starts to move. "Oh, _fuck_. I love you."

He hasn't said that to her all day, he suddenly realizes. He's thought it a million times but it's never made its way out of his mouth. He shifts a little, sitting a little more fully against the arm of the loveseat, wrapping his arms tight around her waist as she bounces on him, bracing his hands between her shoulder blades to keep her close to him.

"I love you," he says again. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

" _Jonathan_ ," she gasps, grinding down on him. "Oh, I love you. I love you."

He had plans. They involved their new, as-yet-untested mattress, her spread bare before him, his mouth traveling the paths of her body for ages, making her squirm and moan and keeping her teetering on the edge until she begged him to push her over, pleaded for release.

He did not plan on frantically fucking her on their ratty old loveseat, in full view of their un-curtained windows, only partially blocked by the tree in their front yard. And yet here he is, her whimpers growing higher and more frantic on top of him, her sex clenching tighter and tighter around him, her mouth held open against his as they pant together, and it's all too much and he can't help it, he's lost in her.

She's still rocking on him when he comes back to himself, when the roar of his blood in his ears quiets enough for him to hear her wanting, reaching whimpers. He feels languid, his limbs heavy, but he manages to move one hand from where it's gripping her hip to where their bodies are joined.

She lets out a strangled _Aaah_ as he works her, drops her forehead onto his shoulder as he brings her over the edge. He feels her squeeze him again even as he softens inside her, feels her nails dig into his biceps and her hips stutter before she goes limp above him. He strokes her softly a few more times, bringing her down, then let his head tip back, gulping for air.

"Oh, thank you," she breathes against his neck, peppering kisses here and there. Settles more fully onto him, chest to chest. He wraps her up in a tight hug, holding her close.

"I had a plan, you know," he admits after a silence. "It did not involve the couch."

She laughs at that, snuggles against him, but he's got nowhere to rest his head and the waistband of his jeans is starting to dig uncomfortably into the back of his thighs. She whines when he shifts under her, pushes at her to move, and he tries kissing her to make it a little easier but they both just end up distracted.

"I need to pull up my pants," he finally admits and she laughs again as she climbs off him. Their apartment is warm from the summer night and they are both sweaty, but he finds he misses her heat immediately anyway.

He watches her redress as he tugs his jeans and boxers back up his hips. He wishes she wouldn't but it's not really an option until they get curtains. He's planning to enforce mandatory naked time as soon as their windows are sufficiently covered.

Her face lights up suddenly and he shoots her a curious look. She points to the stereo and he registers the song just as she names the band.

"Yaz!" She sounds delighted. He pulls himself off the couch, stands before her.

"Yazoo," he corrects. She rolls her eyes.

"The record says Yaz on the cover." She moves towards the crates for proof but he catches her hand and pulls her into his chest. Wraps his arms around her in a loose slow dance hold and starts to sway.

"There was a dispute with a record label," he says into her hair. "They're only Yaz in America."

She giggles, winding her hands up and around his neck to hold him closer, sways with him even as she admonishes, "This isn't really a slow dance song."

"It is now," he murmurs, nuzzling her temple with his nose.

"Why'd you put this on here?" she asks.

"Why do you think?"

"Because underneath that aloof and pretentious exterior you're just a hopeless romantic, ya big softie," she says with a smirk, pulling far enough away to make sure he sees it. He smirks back and brushes his lips against hers.

For a moment they sway to the music, not speaking, just content in each other's arms. When the question bubbles up and out of him it does so unbidden, from a place deep inside that's always wondered, even more in the past year.

"Do you remember, when Will was missing, coming up to me in the hallway at school?"

It's a serious question, it's clear from his tone, and her brow furrows a little bit.

"Of course."

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why did you come up to me?"

"Because," she frowns, "your little brother was missing. I wanted you to know we were thinking about you."

"No one else did that. Steve, his friends, even Barb, no one else came up. Why did you?"

"Because I cared about you," she says and she sounds worried as she says it. "We've known each other a long time. I've always cared about you, even when we weren't friends."

"Me too," he says softly. "Even when I was way, way too shy to say it, I've always cared about you. Maybe I've always loved you, I don't know. I don't know if love is really a thing you can feel when you're that young. But, Nance... it's always been you. Even before I knew it, it was you."

He had managed to keep them moving to the slightly-too-fast beat but she stops them, rises up on her toes and presses her mouth to his. He holds her close, lets her take the lead, feels his soul suffuse with the warmth of her love. He doesn't know how he got this lucky.

"Lizzie Betts told everyone you were the best kisser in school in seventh grade, you know," she says when she breaks away, lowers back down to her flat feet. His eyes pop open in surprise.

"Wh-what?"

"After Stacey's party when we all played—"

"Seven minutes in heaven." He finishes her sentence for her, groans with embarrassment and drops his face into the crook of her neck. "That was the last time I went to anyone's birthday party."

"I know. I wanted to get you into a closet and find out for myself."

He groans again, his face on fire. He's sure he's blushing bright red. She's still talking and he tries to focus.

"I looked for you at every birthday party for the next year. Spin the bottle, seven minutes in heaven, I was always trying to figure out how to end up kissing you. But you were never there."

He looks up, lets her see his blush, isn't surprised when she cups his flaming cheek affectionately with one hand.

"I wish I'd known. I'd have kissed you a lot sooner."

"I wish you had too, but," she looks at him slyly, lets her tongue poke out from between her teeth for a second, "we've got the rest of our lives, right?"

Something inside of his cracks open, breaks free, lifts his heart and his soul. He's almost dizzy with the feeling. Words fail him, so he does the only thing he can think of and kisses her again.

He has thought of his life as a series of endings –the end of his parents' marriage, the end of innocence when he got a job, the end of his family when his brother vanished, the end of the horrors of the demogorgon, the end of his brother's possession, the end of childhood, the end of high school, the end of home.

But he's been wrong this whole time – it is a series of beginnings. Each hardship, each stumbling block, each trauma has opened realms of possibility he could never imagine. Things he could never hope for, never believe were for him.

He holds Nancy close even as the world tilts on its axis. His body is still thrumming, his orgasm's heady cocktail is still in his blood, and suddenly it feels as if a door in his mind has blown wide open.

He will dream, and he will live, and he will thrive. He will be a photographer, he will be a boyfriend, a partner, and one day a husband and a father. He will love his family, love his girlfriend – who will be his wife, who will become a mother, one day, someday – love his friends. He will love his mother, love his brother, help them build the lives they have deserved all along, ensure that they get them. He will make sure Nancy's brother and sister, their friends, the party, get the lives they deserve too.

But it won't just be him, will it? _They_ will build a life, _they_ will make a family, _they_ will leave their mark on the world. _They_ will defeat whatever monsters, real or imagined, come their way. Together.

He pulls on Nancy's hips and she jumps, a move smoothed by years of practice now, wraps her legs around his waist as he carries her, makes his way through the boxes to their bedroom. When he lays her on the bed and braces himself over her, there is something new behind her eyes. He feels it in his too.

They will, he thinks.

They will, they will, they _will_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for coming along on this ride with me. your kudos, your comments, your feedback, it's meant everything as i navigate this future i've created for this fictional couple i'm utterly obsessed with. 
> 
> chapter titles are from, in order:
> 
> 1\. r.e.m., "so. central rain"  
> 2\. elo, "telephone line"  
> 3\. new order, "temptation"  
> 4\. the cure, "just like heaven"  
> 5\. r.e.m., "losing my religion"  
> 6\. yaz, "only you"
> 
> ("losing my religion" is the only song that wasn't out during the time span of this story. i cheated.)
> 
> thank you again, for reading.


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